A recent survey of American teens found that 42% of boys aged 13 to 17 are now using A.I.-powered apps to create their own pornography. Thirty-two percent have created “deepfake” porn of girls their own age, then shared those images with others. In my work as a family physician and researcher, I have talked with these boys. One told me it’s almost magical: he speaks his fantasy, and—poof!—20 seconds later, there it is: professional-grade pornography, spun up in an app such as Seedream or Nano Banana. And this boy is 15 years old. He has never kissed a girl. A growing number of boys describe themselves not as heterosexual but as “pornosexual.” In my experience, a significant minority of these young men are virgins. They say that they prefer porn to the real thing. But they have never experienced the real thing.
Unfortunately, the elderly—by which I mean people over 40 years of age—often have no idea what is going on. A 16-year-old boy was suspended at a school I visited for creating deepfake porn of a classmate, then sharing those images with other boys at the school. When the parents were told what their son had done, they could neither believe nor understand what had happened. They had no idea such a thing was possible. They didn’t think their son was even looking at porn, much less producing and distributing it.
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