Producer:
This episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by DCFS, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Host April Ferguson:
This is Social Work Talks. I'm your host, April Ferguson, the children adolescent senior practice associate at the National Association of Social Workers. Today's episode is about anime and adolescence: 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 in the assessment and treatment of problematic sexual behaviors. He's the creator of the Anime and Sexual Behavior Questionnaire, a three instrument suite designed to help train 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?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
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 learn about gardening, learn about healthy eating was something that I didn't experience in any of my studies in school. So looked into social work and ended up starting my bachelor's in family youth and community sciences from the University of Florida.
Host April Ferguson:
I love that your introduction to social work was already around community, and so you've just been able to continue that in the profession. I love that about the social work profession. It's not just individual work, it's that community work, it's improving community. 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 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?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
I think the core issue is that gap between what youth are consuming and what clinicians are trained to assess. 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 entertainment for young people right now. And so I think it's important to know, as we talk about in our profession, meeting the clients where they are. So educating yourself on that media platform.
Host April Ferguson:
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 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?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
I think it's threefold. First, the integration, unlike explicit adult content that could be clearly labeled, the sexualized content in anime could 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 show, which is action-based with the sexual scripts interwoven into it. And that can give you 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. 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. And so the Mangaka or those who create anime, they're exported to Western audience too... They're not going to change their content for Western audiences.
They've verbalized that. 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.
Host April Ferguson:
Yeah, thank you for that clarification. And I want to ask this really quickly, what platforms could you watch anime? Because we are in a space where children are watching things differently. We're not talking about cable or talking about... Where are they seeing it? Is it just on TV?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
No, I mean anime is on every platform. Remember, capitalism exists. So every major platform, Netflix, Amazon, they're even streaming service direct that only hosts anime content. So that's platforms like Crunchy Roll exists. 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.
Host April Ferguson:
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 youth are accessing anime, different content legally, illegally. They're getting access to it at earlier ages. And so how is anime in this digital media shaping the way young people understand identity relationships and sexuality to today, especially since they're being exposed to it?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
And I think through sexual script theory, all media, whether music, movies have that impact and it tells us how to learn how we engage with sexuality. In my presentations, I'll show a clip of Steve Urkel and some of his behaviors in a popular sitcom. And when we look back at those behaviors on the framing of consent and problematic behaviors, some of his behavior was very problematic. And so anime delivers those narratives at scale to younger and younger audience with increasing accessibility as we had just talked about. Anime may contain certain tropes that could lend to problematic behaviors, whether it's a perverted trope, non-consensual touching played as comedy and maybe waifu culture, which gives a deep parasocial attachment to 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.
Host April Ferguson:
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?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
The framework that I use in my practice is the entry points of curiosity and exposure. I start there of how did you come across it? 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 say, 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 forward things digitally. It's not like for us older generations, 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 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 explore that in our comprehensives and really look into the impact that this popular media genre has on the young people that we serve.
Host April Ferguson:
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 youth to be a little more open about their experiences when you aproach youth that way. And so you already talked about that leading in with curiosity, but what are some other effective 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?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
I think that non-shaming language is something that it's 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 building that rapport. In a lot of ways it's why I develop that 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 a framework for professionals, not even clinicians to 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 what shows do they watch? Maybe watch clips with them and really be interested in some of the, maybe what do they get from the content? And for some young people, anime is just a great way to escape their problems.
It's a great way to explore different worlds, different cultures, and that curiosity is important on both sides.
Producer:
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.
Host April Ferguson:
And then when we think about 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 help youth and families work through any challenges related to some negative consequences of being exposed to maybe some harmful content?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
Yeah, there's two directions. There's the assessment and application side. On the assessment side, we can just ask about media use, adding that to your intake. So much of our intake starts with 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. 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, "I personally know the socioeconomic status of your parents. How are you watching all of this anime which can range? The subscriptions can range to hundreds of dollars a month." And the young person revealed to me, "Well, 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 educate them on digital safety and work to steer him toward a platform that's more appropriate. 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. I use anime characters in breath work experiences. If you're teaching breath work, there's this show called Demon Slayer whose entire power system is based on breath work. For young people who's watched hundreds of hours of a show, it's a natural way to integrate something that they know into clinical interventions that we also know can help with their mental health needs. 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 reach their therapeutic goals.
Host April Ferguson:
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 our checkboxes, our social work theories, we've got these really intense services that we want to offer, but what you just mentioned is creative. It's allowing people to express themselves. It's 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.
Guest Jermaine Wall:
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. 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, okay, let's do this for whatever you're 60 minutes, 45 minutes. 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 this new generation of clients.
Host April Ferguson:
Yeah. And I think it's on us too, to keep up with that. As technology is changing, media's changing, I've really found it's important, especially working with younger people to know what is out there, what options are there are to 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 wifi by the time they get to my office. 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 stay up to date and learn and it gives us some other perspectives about this work because we have to keep up with the young people.
Guest Jermaine Wall:
Have to, yep.
Host April Ferguson:
Any other final thoughts? I know you kind of ended us on some really positive things about anime, but any other final thoughts you would add to this conversation?
Guest Jermaine Wall:
Similar to what you said, that curiosity, not alarm, but curiosity. When working with young people, everything is emerging from the language to the clothes that they wear to the media that they're involved in. 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. With anime specifically the legal landscape and because it's an import from Japanese culture, it's always evolving. 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 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 educate yourself on just a myriad of ways to reach our young people.
Host April Ferguson:
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.
Guest Jermaine Wall:
Yeah.
Host April Ferguson:
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.