What makes normalisation powerful is its invisibility. When something is everywhere, it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like a cultural norm.
A teen holds up his hand to say no. (Photo by Monstera Production/Pexels)
This article was produced out of News Decoder’s school partnership program. Kumbulani Kumbula is a student at African Leadership Academy in South Africa, a News Decoder partner institution. Learn more about how News Decoder can work with your school.
I went to an all-boys boarding school where certain things did not need explanation. On a quiet evening during prep time, if a group of boys gathered tightly around a laptop, heads close, bodies angled inward, smiles breaking out at the wrong moments, you already knew what was on the screen.
No one asked. No one questioned it.
Pornography had become so routine that it barely registered as something worth reacting to. It was not shocking. It was normal.
Sometimes it went further than quiet watching. During free periods in class, someone would joke, “Let’s see who actually knows the most pornstars,” and suddenly it became a quiz. Names flew like sports trivia and confidence was measured by how fast you answered.
The room filled with laughter and competition. Knowing more was impressive. Looking back, what stands out is not that it happened, but that no one challenged it. Not the students. Not the system. Silence made it acceptable.
Boys will be boys
This pattern is not unique to one school or one country. Across the world, teenagers are growing up in environments where behaviours like pornography consumption, underage drinking, smoking and early sexual activity are often framed as unavoidable.
They are described as “just part of growing up,” a phrase that quietly removes responsibility from everyone involved.
According to the National Institutes of Health, adolescents are particularly vulnerable to normalisation because their brains are still developing, especially the regions responsible for impulse control and long-term judgment.
Repeated exposure to explicit material not only influences behaviour, but it also shapes expectations around intimacy, relationships and consent. A 2017 study out of Brigham Young University suggests that early exposure to sexual content can affect emotional development and increase risky behaviours later in life.
What makes normalisation powerful is its invisibility. When something is everywhere, it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like a cultural norm.
Acceptance camouflaged as curiosity
That reality came into sharper focus during a conversation with a student from my current school who attended a similar boarding school. At first, he spoke cautiously, then gradually opened up.
“It didn’t even feel wrong after a while,” he said. “You’d tell yourself you were just curious, but the truth is you were trying to fit in. If you didn’t watch, people assumed you were pretending to be better than everyone else.”
He described how exposure often began early, long before students fully understood what they were consuming. “It messes with how you see people,” he added. “You start carrying these images into real life without realising it.”
His experience reflects broader trends. Peer influence plays a decisive role in shaping teenage behaviour, often outweighing personal values or family beliefs. A Meta-Analysis on Peer Influence by Van de Bongardt found a normative increase in deviant behaviour during adolescence as teens shift their primary social focus to peers in search of acceptance and reward.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention similarly show that perceived norms strongly influence adolescent decisions around sex and substance use.
Ignoring bad behavior
Normalisation does not only happen among peers. Adults can play a role too, sometimes without realising it.
I realised this during a conversation with my teacher, Ms Anne. I was telling her about behaviours that feel increasingly normalised among teenagers, things we rarely stop to question.
She paused, then shared a story from a family function she once attended. A father casually asked his children to hand him beers. Moments later, they were drinking together, laughing, as if nothing about it was unusual.
She was not condemning the moment. What stayed with me was what she said next. “It was really funny to me,” she reflected, “how parents can share drinks with their children.”
Her comment lingered. Not because it was shocking, but because it revealed how normalisation can begin at home, wrapped in humour, tradition, or bonding.
Research supports this idea. The World Health Organization emphasizes that family environments strongly influence adolescent attitudes toward substance use and sexual behaviour, particularly when adults frame these behaviours as harmless or inevitable.
Yet this story is not only about harm. It is also about possibility.
Ending normalisation through knowledge
Despite widespread normalisation, recent studies suggest a shift. Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that teenagers today are drinking less alcohol than previous generations and this is possibly due to increased awareness of health and mental well-being. This suggests that when young people are given information, language and space to question norms, they do.
What becomes clear is that silence is normalisation’s strongest ally. Harmful behaviours thrive when they go unquestioned. But questioning does not always require confrontation. Sometimes it starts with a conversation. Sometimes with discomfort. Sometimes, by refusing to laugh along.
Teenagers are often portrayed as either reckless or powerless. The truth lies somewhere in between. We are shaped by our environments, but we also shape them. Culture is not fixed. It is repeated daily and repetition can be interrupted.
I no longer attend that boarding school, but I still think about those evenings during prep. Not because of what was on the screen, but because of what was missing. Pause. Reflection. Courage.
If normalisation happens quietly, so can resistance. And sometimes, all it takes to change the direction of a room is one person willing to ask, “Why are we okay with this?”
That question might be the beginning of a different kind of growing up.
Questions to consider:
1. What do we mean by normalisation?
2. How do things like watching pornagraphy and drinking alcohol become normalised?
3. Can you think of bad behaviors of people around you that seem to be generally accepted?
Kumbulani Kumbula is a student at African Leadership Academy from Zimbabwe who loves research and long conversations that question everyday norms.