What Is Teaching Teens About Love?
Lessons about love are everywhere, but new research supports parents stepping in.
Posted June 1, 2026 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
One mother noticed her 15-year-old son, Ethan, watching videos about becoming an "alpha" male in dating. She heard advice about status, emotional detachment, and dominance. Another mother saw her 13-year-old daughter, Chloe, spending hours deleting and reposting photos on social media , trying to decide which version of herself looked "hot."
Neither situation is about love, but both show the misdirected lessons in it.
Earlier generations learned about love and intimacy gradually, through friendships, heartbreak, handwritten notes, awkward conversations, and “going out.” The face-to-face fumbling was the education .
Today, the teachings arrive faster and from many sources. Tweens and teens absorb frameworks for adult love through social media, pornography , dating podcasts, and algorithm-driven content that never stops. They adopt the vocabulary of “insecure” or “avoidant” attachment styles, red flags, and toxic relationships without much opportunity to practice the underlying skills to avoid these things. Young people now learn more about emotional and physical intimacy observationally, not through lived experience.
The question is what this is doing to them.
Adolescence as Identity Marketing
The developmental goal of adolescence is identity formation, essentially figuring out who you are, with the contrasting pitfall of role confusion (Erikson, 1968). Today, many adolescents strive for identity marketing instead, figuring out how to optimize outside perceptions. Trends like "looksmaxxing" push boys to focus on physical appearance and social clout. Girls face similar pressure through hypersexualized beauty standards and appearance-based validation. Males and females learn to perform themselves rather than working to know themselves.
For many teens, the primary teachers of intimacy are online sources that treat it as performance, transaction, or risk. Pornography, which is now widespread, accelerates this. A 2022 survey found that the average age of first exposure to porn is 12, with 73 percent of teens between 13 and 17 having viewed it (Robb & Mann, 2022). This means that most teens learn about sex from content that is often violent, aggressive, or degrading. As a report on pornography from England's Children's Commissioner put it: "A lot of it is actually just abuse" (Children's Commissioner for England, 2023).
The messaging from pornography and manosphere sites is harmful. Vulnerability is either a weakness or a means for control. Emotional detachment signals that strength and aggression toward females are normalized. Teens learn that appearance and followers determine worth, and partners are disposable when someone new comes along.
A countercultural curriculum is largely missing. It is more difficult to find reliable guidance on how to build or sustain genuine connections, repair conflict, tolerate disappointment, or be emotionally present with another person.
The Better Influencers
There is good news. Parents can make a difference. According to two new studies, the parent-teen relationship is the strongest predictor of whether a young person will have healthy relationships later in life.
A 2026 study tracked over 2,600 adolescents in Australia and the Netherlands from their teenage years into young adulthood (ages 19 to 28), measuring the quality of their relationships with parents and peers and then assessing their intimate relationships as adults. (Marabel-Whitburn et al., 2026). Teens with high-quality relationships at home and with friends were significantly more likely to form healthy adult relationships. Bowlby predicted this decades ago. According to attachment theory, early relationships shape our deepest expectations about love, trust, worthiness, and the safety of closeness (Bowlby, 1988).
A separate U.S. study followed more than 7,000 people from adolescence into their late 30s and found that strong family connections during the teen years more than doubled the likelihood of meaningful social connections in adulthood (Whitaker et al., 2026). This held across every dimension measured: close friendships, community belonging, emotional support, and relationship satisfaction with an adult partner. Close, nurturing relationships with parents during middle and high school were associated with a variety of positive social outcomes, up to two decades later (Whitaker et al., 2026). Importantly, the family structure mattered less than how connected teens felt to the family they had.
These two independent studies, from opposite sides of the world, confirm that healthy parent-child relationships matter. While the importance of early relationships is not new, there is new urgency. For the first time, the primary source of relational education is more accessible, vivid, and persistent than any other human relationship in a young person's life.
Parents can counter the powerful messaging their children receive by modeling empathy, mutual care, and honest communication. They can also teach teens the skills that pornography and social media miss, including accountability, boundaries , and critical thinking. Parents can use conversation and key questions to help teens shape their own ideas about love and intimacy, drawing from values rather than their social media feeds.
What Adolescents Actually Need
Open-ended questions can help young people think critically about what culture teaches them. These are not one-time conversations but starting points for ongoing dialogue. With guidance and support, they can build their own blueprint for love, sex, and healthy relationships.
To start the conversation, parents might ask:
Ethan and Chloe's parents did not think to ask them what they truly want in relationships or what they believe about love, dating, and performance culture. Asking these questions gives teens a space to reflect on their experiences and develop important boundaries. This may be the most countercultural thing parents can do because nonjudgmental inquiry gives young people the permission to explore their own values and visions for what love is to them.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.
Children's Commissioner for England. (2023). "A lot of it is actually just abuse": Young people and pornography. Office of the Children's Commissioner.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. W.W. Norton & Company.
Marabel-Whitburn, K., Marshall, E. M., & Olsson, C. A., MacDonald, J.A., Spry, E.A., Aarsman, S.R., Letcher, P., Kretschmer. T., & Greenwood, C.J. (2026). The association between parent–child and peer relationship quality in adolescence and intimate partner relationship quality in young adulthood: A two-cohort longitudinal investigation. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 36 (2), e70184.
Robb, M. B., & Mann, S. (2022). Teens and pornography. Common Sense Media. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/20…
Whitaker, R. C., Dearth-Wesley, T., Herman, A. N., & Jordan, M. C. (2026). Family connection in adolescence and social connection in adulthood. J AMA Pediatrics, 180 (3), 298–305.
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Cheralyn Leeby, Ph.D., LMFT, is a Florida-licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with more than 30 years of clinical and educational experience. She co-hosts the 7 on Sundays podcast, ranked number two in the Dating Violence category, and she teaches an interactive curriculum with college students and community groups nationwide called "What Is Love?"
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.