Between Sex Education and Big Mouth, we’re more open about young people’s sexual development than ever. But are we doing it correctly?

After the success of Big Mouth, it’s clear that Netflix has decided to invest more in stories about young people’s early explorations of sexuality. Sex Education has been highly acclaimed for its outspoken take on teenagers’ sexual development, its treatment of difficult social issues and its excellent characterization.

It’s a funny show, and it plays an important role in improving the way we commonly talk about sex and its role in young people’s lives. It’s helpful to process the learnings we had as teenagers by looking in hindsight as adults, and there’s something inherently funny about the awkward years between childhood and adulthood — which is all great fodder for both comedy and drama.

But I still have some mixed feelings about it. As progressive and important as this show is, is it responsible to depict teenagers’ sexuality in this way?

It’s profoundly weird to think that we’re consuming so much content about underage people in profoundly personal, sexualized situations. And it’s not just Sex Education or Big Mouth — Hollywood has been doing this for a long time with movies, from raunchy (and, frankly, gross) American Pie to the more tongue-in-cheek Mean Girls. We watch teenagers — however implicitly — masturbate, have sex, explore fetishes, and much more. And although it’s both a social and biological reality on some level for all teenagers, isn’t it weird that adults are watching teenagers do these things?

Of course, the actors aren’t teenagers — they’re mostly played by actors in their 20s. So that’s okay, right… or is it? Isn’t it uncomfortable to think that we have to hire 20-year-olds to play these characters because hiring anyone their actual age to do these things would probably be illegal?

That’s not to say that Sex Education or Big Mouth should be accused of child pornography or anything like that. There are many positives to them tackling these subject matters in the way they do: they normalize young people asking questions, discuss issues openly and frankly, and remove a lot of both the mystique and taboo surrounding sex and sexuality… as well as other issues like therapy, consent, abortion, love and trauma.

And yet the rampant hypersexualization of teenagers is a social ill that’s happening everywhere, and I wonder if we’re conscious of the effects shows like this have in either mitigating or strengthening that trend.

Many of the 16-year-olds in Sex Education don’t look like real teenagers at all (mostly because they aren’t teenagers), and I wonder what effect, conscious or subconscious, these shows have on kids this age that are going through this learning process. There’s already a lot of pressure related to sex for young people: expectations about what one should like or not like, should have experience with or not, and the attitudes that one should have towards sex, love, and our own bodies.

It’s good to encourage learning more about our bodies, and talking about sex and how it fits into our lives, but as we saw with Otis, the process is a deeply personal one — and not one that should be hurried or forced. I wonder if Sex Education gave enough weight to Otis’ mother’s line about him being perfectly normal, and how he’s not supposed to know or have experience in everything yet as a 16-year-old boy. I fear that instead, it might have just ended up reinforcing the idea that a 16-year-old who doesn’t masturbate and is a virgin is somehow “stunted”… which is both untrue and a toxic, disrespectful way of addressing sexuality.

Meanwhile, statistically, less teenagers are actually having sex than in the past.

I loved Sex Education. It made me laugh out loud many times, and it felt incredibly genuine and honest about topics even I felt kind of uncomfortable with (and that was definitely the point). It helped me see things in a different way. I particularly loved how gentle it was with complex topics, viewing issues like homosexuality, trauma and abortion from very personal angles; it feels perfectly honest and not preachy, and because of that it’s a much more efficient educational experience. No one is a stereotype; nothing ever goes the way you would expect it to.

So in bringing up questions about how appropriate this genre is, I’m not trying to shut down Sex Education. In fact, I’m eager for season 2. I just think that, in line with the theme of opening up more about these topics and having healthy conversations about them, we should discuss the implications of depicting teenagers — or children, in the case of Big Mouth — in a sexual context.

We need to ask these questions. The media holds an iron grip on young people’s education on this topic (which is only strengthened by the lack of effective sex ed in schools), so every space where underage people and sex intersect should be thoroughly examined, because it holds a big sway in our perception of things.

Hopefully, shows like Sex Education can continue to add new nuance and empathy to the conversation, as we become more conscious of how to explore these topics properly.