NASW Social Work Talks - EP 146 - Anime and Adolescent Wellness: Using Modern Media to Build Rapport and Assess Sexual Risk

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Anime is often viewed as harmless entertainment, but some content can include explicit sexual themes that influence adolescent development and mental health. In this episode, we explore with our guest Jermaine Wall, LCSW-S,  owner of Crescent Counseling why social workers and mental health professionals should consider digital media use as part of assessment and treatment planning. Listen now and join the conversation wherever your normally listen to podcasts, or on our website: https://www.socialworkers.org/news/nasw-social-work-talks-podcast We also discuss the complex intersection of anime, sexual content, identity development, and clinical practice through a research-informed, clinically grounded perspective. Learn why digital media should be part of comprehensive psychosocial assessments, how anime and other online content can shape adolescent behavior and development, and what social workers, therapists, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals should consider when assessing risk and developing treatment plans.

This episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by DCFS, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. This is Social Work Talks. I'm your host, April Ferguson, the Children and Adolescents Senior Practice Associate at the National Association of Social Workers. Today's episode is Anime and Adolescents, What Clinicians Need to Know About Sexual Content. And joining us today is Jermaine Wall. Jermaine is a licensed independent clinical social worker and founder of Crescent Counseling Services. With over 15 years of clinical experience, his work centers on youth and adolescent mental health, trauma-informed practice, and the assessment and treatment of problematic sexual

behaviors. He is the creator of the Anime and Sexual Behavior Questionnaire, a three-instrument suite designed to help trained professionals explore how anime and related media intersect with sexual behavior concerns in youth. Jermaine is an internationally recognized presenter and leads Anime Awakening, a community where anime is more than entertainment. It's a space to explore themes anime has been teaching us all along and how they show up in the real world. And so I want to welcome you, Jermaine, today. Thank you for being with us to talk about this important topic. And I'll just jump right in so we can get started and our listeners and myself can get to learning

about this topic. And so could you tell us about yourself and what interested you in the social work profession? Yeah. Thank you, April, for the opportunity and the great intro. My journey started with journalism. At first, I wanted to be a photographer. And thankfully, I didn't do that because this was before smartphones and Instagram. And I ended up volunteering for a community organization. We ended up building a community garden. And the joy that I had in helping young people kind of learn about gardening, learn about healthy eating was something that I didn't experience in any of my studies in school. So I looked into social work and ended up kind of starting my bachelor's in family, youth and community sciences from the University of Florida.

I love that your introduction to social work was already around community. And so you just been able to continue that in the profession. And I love that about the social work profession. It's not just individual work, it's that community work, it's improving communities. So I love to hear that that's how you got your start. And so I know today we're continuing to talk about youth and adolescents, and we're talking about anime and sexual content and sexual behaviors. And so kind of switching to talk more specifically about that, what is the core problem social workers are seeing when youth engage with anime and what are some common misconceptions clinicians have about anime? I think the core issue is kind of like that gap between what youth are consuming and what clinicians are trained to assess. Right. Most practitioners, they don't really know enough about anime to ask the right questions. And because of that gap, maybe there could be something clinically significant that they're missing, especially for me as a therapist who work with young people with illegal, harmful or problematic sexual behaviors.

The biggest misconception is that anime is just a cartoon and anime is one of the more popular kind of entertainment for young people right now. And so I think it's important to know, as we talk about in our profession, meet in the clients where they are. So so educating yourself on that that media platform. Yeah, thank you for that. And I think that's kind of what I've heard and what I've thought and what I've heard from other colleagues that anime is a cartoon. So that automatically means it's for children. And so I think sometimes our guardrails aren't up because we just assume it's a cartoon. It's fine. The content is specifically targeted for children. And that's not always the case. And so when we think about anime and different other media, maybe other cartoons, what's different about anime and other forms of sexualized content that youth are exposed to? Because we know like pornography is inappropriate. We know some adult things, adult films are appropriate. But when we think about anime, what's different that might make it inappropriate or maybe have our not necessarily red flags up when we think about anime?

I think it's threefold. First, the integration. Unlike explicit adult content that could be kind of clearly labeled, the sexualized content in anime can be woven directly into the storyline. So a youth isn't just watching pornography. They could be watching an adventure series, maybe a comedy, a shounen, which is like action-based with the sexual scripts kind are interwoven into it. And that can give you like a fundamentally different picture. Secondly, the legal environment in which anime is produced. When I'm presenting on this topic, I always try to highlight that anime is an import from Japan, right? And so Japan's legal framework is different than the one that we practice in. I recently presented in Toronto and their legal

framework on sexualized content is a lot stricter than the United States, right? And so the mangaka or those who create anime, they're asking Western audience to, they're not going to change their content for Western audiences. They've verbalized that, right? And then third is kind of the onset. I'm seeing youth who are encountering anime at much younger ages than maybe youth would encounter pornography. I have some young people that I work with say they've encountered anime at age six years old. So they're being exposed to maybe some of these sexualized scripts that are imported from a country whose legal framework is totally different from our own. Yeah, thank you for that clarification. And I want to ask this really quickly.

What platforms can you watch anime? Because we're in a space where children are watching things differently. We're not talking about cable or talking about platform. Where are they seeing it? Is it just on TV? No, I mean, anime is on every platform. Remember, capitalism exists. So every major platform, Netflix, Amazon, there are even streaming service direct that only host anime content. So that's platforms like Crunchyroll exist. I have young clients who from a different socioeconomic background, they will use YouTube. And there are some people who will upload anime to YouTube platforms, even if it's illegally. The biggest risk, and that's where we kind of talk about exposure to sexualized content is the illegal platforms that exist,

the free websites that exist that will host the content alongside maybe viruses, gambling content or pornography advertisements. And many of these illegal websites are hosted in countries outside of our own. Oh, yeah. Thank you for that clarification. And it makes it sound like it's accessible, different. And I think we know in general, youth are accessing different content in different ways. And it sounds like it's a lot of different ways they can access this content. And so, you know, youth are accessing anime, different content, legally, illegally, they're getting access to it at earlier ages. And so how is anime and this digital media shaping the way young people understand identity relationships and sexuality to today, especially

since they're being exposed to it. And I think through sexual script theory, all media, whether music, movies, kind of have that impact, right? And it kind of tells us how to learn how we engage with sexuality. In my presentations, I'll show a clip of Steve Urkel, right, and some of his behaviors in a popular sitcom. And when we look back at those behaviors, the framing of consent and problematic behaviors, some of this behavior was very problematic, right? And so anime delivers those narratives at scale to younger and younger audience with increasing accessibility as we had

just talked about right anime um may contain like certain tropes that um could lend to problematic behaviors whether it's a perverted trope non-consensual uh touching played as as comedy and um maybe waifu culture which gives like a deep like parasocial attachment to like fictional characters. And this also intersects with the AI world that we're living in now, where some young people are having relationships with AI chatbots, in a sense. Yeah, there's definitely things changing rapidly around technology, and there's a lot of intersection. And I do understand how it's hard for parents to keep up, but it's also hard as practitioners for us to keep up with all the different concerns that are out there. And you kind of mentioned this, but when youth

are exposed to different content, not even just anime, as you said, just in general, this media content. So when they're exposed to animated or fictional sexual content, when does this become a concern in clinical practice? When should a practitioner be worried about what youth are seeing online and maybe some behaviors? The framework that I use in my practice is kind of the entry points of kind of curiosity and exposure, right? I start there of how did you come across it, right? Was it, hey, kids are talking about it in school and I looked it up online? Or exposure in that, hey, my friend dragged me and said, hey, you have to watch this show. Whether it's just a normalized show or whether it's explicit content, I think that

curiosity exposure exists across a realm, especially with meme culture now and how it's so easy to kind of forward things digitally. It's not like for us older generations, you've had to pop in, you had to go sit in front of a television and maybe pop in a VCR or something like that. It's much easier to just forward a meme or forward a clip or something like that. And so the last framework I use is fantasy. What are you doing when you're exposed to this? Are you having thoughts of maybe inappropriate touching? Are you looking at people or fantasizing at people a different way? Or from a positive perspective, are you using these rich anime worlds to help with your

self-esteem, right? To think about maybe how would my favorite character deal with a stressful situation? So it doesn't always have to be negative, but we would kind of explore that in our comprehensives and really look into the impact that this popular media genre has on the young people that we serve. Yeah, I really like that approach because it sounds like you're leaning in with this curiosity. It's not like an accusation or assumption. It's truly just asking how did this come about, which seems to allow you to be a little more open about their experiences when you approach youth that way. And so you already kind of talked about that

kind of leading in with curiosity, but what are some other effective ways, ways that we can ask youth about their media use, especially if it's involving explicit or sensitive content? What are some other ways we can engage in conversations with them? I think that non-shaming language is something that is very important. For those of us who work with young people, the moment that a youth feels judged for what they're intaking or what they're talking about, the conversation is really over. And it doesn't help in kind of building that rapport. In a lot of ways, it's why I developed kind of the ASBQ that gives clinicians, it's much easier for me. I've been watching anime for decades, but it's much easier for, this gives kind of a framework for professionals,

not even clinicians, to kind of ask those questions in a non-shaming way. I think that curiosity as we had talked about can be used in the same way maybe start with asking like what shows do they watch right maybe watch clips with them and and really be interested in and some of the maybe what do they get from from the content and and for some young people um anime is just a and a great way to kind of escape their problems it's a great way to explore different worlds different cultures and that curiosity is important on both sides right thanks this episode of social work talks is brought to you by dcfs the illinois department of children and family services illinois dcfs is hiring make a difference for illinois children and families with competitive

salaries excellent benefits career advancement opportunities and tuition reimbursement bilingual spanish and english professionals are in high demand and may be eligible for additional pay learn more and apply today at dcfsjobs.illinois.gov and then when we think about um even not just anime but just other media outlets or different things that could be causing problematic sexual behaviors what are some effective prevention and intervention tools that practitioners should be aware of to maybe address some concerning behaviors and to kind of help youth and families work through any challenges related to some negative consequences of being exposed to maybe some harmful content yeah there's there's two directions there's the

assessment and application side on the assessment side we can just ask about media use right adding that to your intake so much of our intake starts with like do you watch pornography yes or no what happens if a young person says no they don't watch pornography but maybe they watch animated content or anime that's within that gray area. Right. And similar to what you asked, and it was such a natural question, what platforms are you watching these services on? I've had a young person in my practice, we're talking about anime and I stopped for a second and I'm like, you know, I personally know the socioeconomic status of your parents. how are you watching all of this anime which can range like the subscriptions can range to like

hundreds of dollars a month and the young person revealed to me well i'm you i'm watching it on this website and in a non-judging way i just talked about those websites and maybe provided some education on the dangers of using those sites and because we had had a rapport the young person admitted hey yeah on those sites there's these weird pop-ups that'll happen and i'll exit out of them, but it gave me a space to kind of educate them on digital safety and work to steer him toward a platform that's more appropriate, right? On an intervention side, anime can be used as a clinical tool. It is something that I use within my practice, and it's not just a clinical concern, right? I use anime characters in breathwork experiences. If you're teaching breathwork,

There's a show called Demon Slayer whose entire power system is based on breath work for young people who's watched, you know, hundreds of hours of a show. It's a it's a natural way to kind of integrate something that they know into clinical interventions that we also know can help with with their mental health needs. Right. I've used anime characters in building purpose and an identity. and what's great about these narratives is that each character have their own set of powers and strengths. But a lot of times in our work from a strength-based perspective, our young people don't understand their own identity or don't understand their own strengths. So many times I will use these characters and these stories maybe in a narrative way or in a strength-based way to help young people kind of reach their therapeutic goals.

Yeah, I really like that because that brings in a level of creativity into the therapeutic space and also brings in their own interest as well. I think sometimes we have like our checkboxes, our social work theories. We've got these like really intense like services that we want to offer. But like what you just mentioned is creative. It's allowing people to express themselves as bringing in new ways to view things that we know are important, like breathing techniques. But how does that breathing technique relate to something that they're already familiar with? So I really like that you mentioned that, how it could be used. That's a great point.

It's something that I always think about because our young people are either being driven in the car by their parents or guardians, right? And on the way to our office space, they could very well be watching a very engaging show and engaging TikTok. And just imagine coming in our office and we print out a worksheet and we're like, OK, let's do this for whatever year, 60 minutes, 45 minutes. Right. That doesn't make the therapeutic space something that's appealing. So it's so important to, as we always say, meet the client where they are, but to recognize that we have to make our clinical practice and our clinical spaces engaging to to this new generation of clients. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's on us to kind of keep up with that as technology is changing, media is changing. I've really found it's important, especially working with younger people, to know what is out there, what options are. There are just stream in the car. Sometimes parents don't know about that. clinicians don't know about that. You can stream in the car. I've had clients just automatically hop onto the Wi-Fi by the time they get to my office. You know, they're technologically savvy.

And so it's on us to keep up. And having this conversation with you, I think, is a part of that process of knowing what's out there, learning, maybe updating your assessments, maybe updating an intervention strategy to be a little more creative. And so having that conversation with you, I think, helps us to kind of stay up to date and learn. And it gives us some other perspectives about this work because we have to we have to keep up with the young people have to yep any other final thoughts you know you kind of ended us on some really positive things about anime but any other final thoughts you would add to this conversation similar to to what you said like that curiosity not alarm but curiosity we when working with young people

everything is emerging from the language to the clothes that they wear to the media that they involved in, right? And so the research is always catching up with those things. But for us who work with young people, we're kind of at the ground floor of some of this language, right? With anime, specifically the legal landscape, and because it's an import from Japanese culture, it's always evolving, right? And so developing these assessment and these questionnaire tools in real time is kind of the work that I'm in the middle of right now. Beyond that clinical landscape, if you like to explore like the intersection

of anime and wellness, you talked about before anime awakening community. And as much as you can just reach out to me and anybody who's in this kind of geek related world to like educate yourself on just a myriad of ways to reach our young people. Yeah, thank you so much for that. And included in the show notes is more information about this topic and you as well.

And so we thank you for being here and educating us and educating the community about different emerging topics for youth and adolescents. I appreciate it. Yeah. And so I want to thank our audience for tuning into this episode of Social Work Talks. Again, thank you, Jermaine, for this wonderful and enlightening conversation. I know I learned something new and I hope our audience also learned something new as well.

Again, thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you next time. Thank you.