It Was Just a Beauty Video — Until One Click Led Me to Exactly What I Don’t Want My Kid to See

Let me start by explaining the kind of parent I am not. 

I am far from an ultra-conservative parent. In fact I am not conservative, pretty much at all. I am very open with my children about their bodies and what they are capable of. I start early, instilling information as they can handle it, easing them into ideas they will need to know in their next phase of life. 

The human body isn’t a big mystery here.  I don’t panic about my kids seeing a couple of seconds of non-sexual nudity if they walk by a grown-up show on TV. In the context of art or medical situations, I don’t even think twice if they see fully nude people. 

We aren’t really religious these days. We curse within earshot. We let them make alternate dinners if they don’t like what I cook. Bedtime? I mean, kinda. On school nights. 

We run a very loose ship. Many days, the monkeys are running the circus. Chaos ensues. 

But I am really strict and careful about one thing, and that’s the internet, especially social media. 

My oldest is about to turn 13, and he will soon be old enough to join most social media services according to their terms of use. I’ve already informed him that it will not be happening. This week, something happened that confirmed exactly why he won’t be on social media any time soon.  

This is not some internet rumor or fear-mongering. I have screen recordings that I took myself in case TikTok needed proof to remove them or ban the users.

Recently, I was scrolling in the late evening. A video of a beautiful young Black woman detailing her curly hair routine came across my FYP. I’m always in for hair or makeup vids, so I clicked the suggested search below the video. It appeared completely innocuous. 

Well, it wasn’t. Maybe a porn connoisseur would have known what they were getting into, but to a person who isn’t well-versed in … I don’t know, porn stuff … it appeared that we would be staying in the realm of haircare. All it said was “white shampoo.”

Within seconds of clicking that link, I personally witnessed three separate video clips of very specific porn.

And I’m not a pearl-clutcher. I am not exaggerating. I do mean, porn porn. Not something that is just too sexy for TikTok. Full-on p-o-r-n depicting fully naked men at the moment of climax. There were also plenty of videos depicting just the fluids, without the genitals in view.

The specific videos I saw had been up for between three days and four hours each at the time I viewed them. The next morning, they were gone. However, a few days later, curious to see if TikTok had cottoned onto the trend yet, I entered the same seemingly innocuous search term. In seconds, I found four more truly pornographic videos uploaded in the last 24 hours, and dozens of the borderline ones. 

I contacted a spokesperson at TikTok to get an idea of the measures they have in place to prevent this kind of thing, and I was given encouraging stats. According to my contact at TikTok, in the first quarter of 2025, 99.13% of the videos they removed for violating their “Sensitive and Mature Themes” policies were removed proactively, even before they received a report from the community. 94.7% were removed before receiving any views, and 94.9% were removed within 24 hours of being reported. 

In addition to removing videos, the moment TikTok is aware of a trending hashtag that violates their terms of service, they assured me that, “We do not serve search results or hashtags related to this type of content, and instead users are redirected to our Community Guidelines.” 

I witnessed this myself by running a third search a few days later. I was directed to community guidelines; however, I was still able to access the content by clicking on the “videos” tab. 

In addition to explaining their policies for removing explicit content, the rep at TikTok shared information about their suite of teen safety tools, including a Family Pairing option to allow close monitoring. They do their best to make sure their platform is as safe as possible for their teen users. 

What TikTok does not have is a comprehensive suite of tools to keep children safe, and that is because children under 13 are not permitted to use the platform. 

At the time of publication, weeks after my first encounter with the male masturbation content, I was able to find many videos simply by misspelling the search term slightly because when TikTok blocked the original, people found workarounds. It’s the way of the entire internet.  

And THAT is what I hope parents take away from this. 

This one particular issue happened to take place on TikTok, but this problem exists on every single social media platform. Social media is the open internet, and anywhere people are allowed to upload videos, they are going to upload porn. Some of that porn will bypass even the most sophisticated and well-monitored screening process.

 The moment you allow social media, you accept that risk — and for me, that risk is too great. 

I’m not concerned with policing every single thing my children see. But I am very concerned with making sure that my children are not seeing actual porn. 

Not now. Not yet. Not as kids. 

I want my kids to have the chance to form a realistic, healthy concept of sex before they see adults engaging in exaggerated sex acts designed for views and money-making, rather than connection or pleasure. I don’t want their first visual impressions of sex to be video clips that have no context, no explanation, and don’t prioritize respect or consent. 

I have kept a healthy, open dialogue with my kids from the time they could speak, specifically to avoid the need to seek answers about important things from unreliable sources. Sex is such an important thing; I want them to have a fighting chance to approach it in a positive way. If that is going to include information from the internet, it needs to be intentional. Educational age-appropriate resources provided at specific times for specific purposes. 

I sometimes wonder if I’m too strict about the internet in a world where social media is here to stay. I wonder if I will end up keeping my kids from interacting with their peers in a way that is inevitable in 2025. I don’t want to make them feel isolated or left out. But then something like this happens, and I know I’m making the right choice in keeping them away from social media as long as I can. 

Some things can’t be unseen. Some concepts are just so big, and they’re still just little. They can never be little again. I just want to protect them a while longer.

Need pointers on how to talk about sex with your kids? Here’s how some of our favorite celebs address “the talk” in their households.