What This Child Crimes Detective Wants Parents to Know About the Internet

Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual abuse, coercion, exploitation, child sexualization, and other potentially distressing experiences. Listener discretion is advised.

What does sexual assault prevention actually look like—and are we starting the conversation early enough? In this bonus episode of Consider Before Consuming, Elisabeth and Jordan discuss recent cases involving college students at Cornell University and the University of Florida, and the broader problem of sexual violence on college campuses. How can pornography and peer culture shape ideas about sex, consent, and rejection? And what everyday actions can help prevent harm before an assault ever occurs? They explore these questions and practical “micro-preventions” that can help create a safer, healthier culture.

Freddie Woodward is an Olympian and former Team Great Britain diver who began viewing pornography as a young teenager. Despite the extraordinary discipline it took to reach the 2016 Olympic Games, Freddie found himself unable to simply use that same discipline to quit porn. Can you be addicted to porn and not realize it? Why is it so hard to quit porn? How does porn affect motivation, relationships, and mental health? What actually helps someone stop watching porn for good? In this episode, Freddie shares how his porn use became a daily habit, how it escalated into other online sexual behaviors, and what happened when intimate content of him was leaked online in 2017. He also reflects on using porn to cope with difficult emotions, life after the Olympics, years of unsuccessful attempts to quit, and the tools that ultimately helped him change. Today, Freddie says he's more proud of quitting porn than becoming an Olympian.

*This episode includes discussions of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Listener discretion is advised. Kellye Netz is a detective sergeant who has spent years investigating sexual offenses against children and interviewing individuals arrested for possessing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Through those investigations, she says she has repeatedly encountered offenders whose behavior did not begin with CSAM, but progressed after years of pornography consumption and increasingly extreme content. How can pornography use escalate into more extreme material? What do offenders say about how they ended up viewing CSAM? And how has technology changed the way illegal sexual content is accessed and investigated? In this episode, Kellye shares what she has observed firsthand, including why some offenders seem relieved when they're finally caught, how mainstream social platforms can become part of the pathway to illegal material, and what her work has taught her as a parent about talking openly with kids about pornography and online safety

Dr. Michael Robb is a developmental psychologist and Head of Research at Common Sense Media. In this episode, he joins us to unpack findings from two major Common Sense Media studies: Teens and Pornography, which explores how teens are exposed to and engage with online pornography, and Teens in the AI Era: Pornography and Sexual Content, which examines how AI-generated explicit content is creating new challenges for young people. Common Sense Media’s research found that the average reported age of first exposure to pornography was 12, while 30% of teens reported seeing pornography during the school day. And as AI-generated sexual content becomes increasingly common, 44% of teens say they’ve encountered it, with about 1 in 4 of those teens seeing AI sexual content depicting themselves or someone they personally know. Why do teens watch porn? What are teens learning from pornography about sex? And how is AI-generated porn changing what young people encounter online? Dr. Robb discusses differences in how boys and girls engage with pornography, why so much exposure happens accidentally, what teens themselves say they're learning from porn, and what parents and trusted adults should know about explicit deepfakes and AI-generated sexual content.