THERE is a distasteful joke I tell whenever I get the chance:

"What's the main cause of paedophilia in Ireland?

Answer: Sexy children." It is naturally offensive, and either provokes massive laughter or tut tutting, but I'm beginning to think the reason it's so hilarious is because there is a bite of reality to its sentiment. Over the past few years, the relentless sexualisation of children has finally begun to manifest in their behaviour. And this time we're not talking about kids in the US or in Britain who were always too sharp for their own good. This time we're talking about young people here.

At the end of May, what was arguably the biggest Irish story of the year began to unfold. A 41year-old man who had sex with a 12-year-old girl was released from custody when the law covering statutory rape was struck down.

For a moment, all Irish people cared about was "the children". A bizarre Simpsons-esque mob descended on the Dail, where Joe Duffy's radio show was blared from speakers, and the papers, talk shows and conversation in general were all full of sanctimonious pleas for protection.

When the Supreme Court saved the Minister for Justice's neck by locking up Mr A and his alphabetical cohorts, a new debate about the age of consent emerged.

The politicians would sort it out, we would have a wide debate on the issue and the kiddies would be saved.

Seven months later, the debate has cooled to lukewarm apathy, with the government deciding that maybe they won't have a debate anymore now that a bunch of bishops have said that 16 is too young to have sex.

In the eyes of those whom the law covers, it does not matter at all what the age of consent is. In fact, that's probably the last thing going through the minds of a young teen couple who are about to have sex.

Western children and teenagers are bombarded by sex and warped versions of sexuality in popular culture. When was the last time you saw a child dressed as a child, and not as some kind of adultnymph hybrid? When cultural reference points are as sordid as most are today, you cannot blame children for having a warped view of sex and engaging in dodgy sexual behaviour. It's not the age of consent we should be worrying about, it's the sexual avalanche that falls around us every day within the increasingly pornographic pop culture that acts as the main message board for teens.

The Pussycat Dolls, who are most popular amongst pre-teens and early teens, wear underwear as clothes and croon about sex in a confusing and contradictory messages, "I'm not one of these ho's / Chasing dreams not diamond rings / So don't call me no more" they sing on one track, while another claims "It was completely understood / A onenight stand would do us good".

Before Christmas, I had a reunion of sorts with some old school friends, most of whom I hadn't seen in the five years that have passed since I got my Leaving Certificate results. I think at that time, in sixth year, most of my classmates (in a co-ed school) were virgins.

The assumption was, if you were in a relatively long-term relationship you were having sex, and if you weren't, well then, you weren't. Sharing classes and mingling on a daily basis with the opposite sex gave most of both genders an emotional maturity that was missing from our counterparts in same-sex schools, most of whom had spent their first 18 years without a friend of the opposite sex.

Back then, there was a choice with sex. And daily interaction with teenage boys in all their smelly glory meant that you'd probably rather wait a little bit until you got into bed with them.

Our favourite TV programmes were Friends and Home And Away. Mainstream misogynistic hiphop was only beginning to infiltrate our tastes, in the shapes of Eminem and Nelly.

Chats down memory lane reinforced the memory that we were no saints; there were unsupervised parties with all of the teenage trappings of sex, drugs and drug dealers. There was drunk-driving, fights and allnight drinking sessions. At the time, of course, it all seemed perfectly natural to pass out in a cubicle at the various legendary easy-onthe-ID clubs on Camden Street, or return to school on a Monday morning from a weekend of teenage discos with various tales of games of beat the slapper.

Funnily enough, the only thing that ruffled us was the behaviour of those younger than us. As we grew older, the antics of 13- and 14-yearolds became more shocking. The stuff they were getting up to was just weird. While my peers always had fun and had some grasp on limits, the kids younger than us were reckless, rudderless and were normalising bizarre actions.

Children seem to be expressing self-loathing in their actions. Any conversation with teenage girls will unveil another disgusting sex game, more shocking behaviour and treatment at the hands of boys that can only be described as abuse. Adults who have meaningless sex, multiple snogging partners in one night and enough alcohol to make them puke and pass out are viewed (although not as much as they should be in Ireland) as damaged individuals who have "issues". But the troupes of young people across Ireland who engage in this sort of behaviour on a weekly basis are viewed as articulating their teenage years. Someone who is sexually reckless is viewed, properly so, as needy, self-loathing, insecure, emotionally damaged. Those are adjectives that we can now ascribe to Irish teenagers.

A child does not need a credit card, or intimate knowledge of various sexual acts or terminology.

A child needs compassion and support. Unfortunately, our support systems have been outsourced, in terms of providing entertainment for kids in the form of extra pocket money instead of extra family time. Sex education in schools is a complete shambles.

And every television programme, song, celebrity, film and item of clothing screams sex.

Meanwhile, as a society, we refuse to engage with the needs of teenagers, offering instead ASBOs, "no skateboarding" signs, and jamming talk radio switchboards on Junior Cert results night, as if their drink problem is anything other than a reflection of their pain in a society that anyway encourages alcohol abuse.

We have given so much freedom to children and young teenagers and expected confidence in return, yet all we have got is confusion.

Reference points of societal norms have been taken away from the family and replaced by a bizarrely erotic popular culture that rewards sluttiness. Goals have changed: who can be the dirtiest, the raunchiest, who can push the envelope in what's fashionable to the point of nudity? Heroes and role models are defined by that bizarre barometer, "celebrity".

One of the most famous women in the world, whom tweens and teens queued for hours to see outside BT2 on Grafton Street earlier in the year, was Paris Hilton, a thick and false glorified porn star.

For the boys, they still have their footballers, but today's soccer players seem more busy filming themselves gang-raping some drunk blonde than actually playing a sport. And what do the parents do? Help them queue to see Paris, or buy them silly, expensive clothes to make them look more like the footballer they want to be.

All that's not to say it's all the fault of parenting. Many parents must feel a sense of helplessness when a society decides that parenting isn't really an issue any more, it's not something that needs to be done. Instead, they hand over the responsibility of instilling values into their offspring to advertisers, record companies, programme makers and various other peddlers of prurience.

Commercial hiphop, the dominant youth culture globally, has a lot to answer for. Apart from the ridiculous macho lyrics that detail the trials of rappers shagging all around them, the visual elements are equally damaging. Hiphop saved the music video, filling MTV with hordes of naked girls in various stripper poses. (As Kanye West put it, "If it wasn't for race mixing there'd be no video girls. Me and most of our friends like mutts a lot.

Yeah, in the hood they call 'em mutts." Charming. ) Lyrics like "If that ho won't let you f***, She a ho, she a ho / If she don't wanna give you head, She a ho, she a ho" (from Lil Flip's 'Get Crunk'), or perhaps from the number one in the Irish top 10 at the time of writing, "The way she climbs up and down them poles / Lookin' like one of them Pretty Cat Dolls / Try to hold my woody back through my drawers". ('Smack That' by Akon and featuring Eminem) might make you blush, but that's what the kids will be singing at discos and parties over the new year, with dance moves imitating the 'mutts' in the videos.

Those who are old enough to know better absorb popular culture with filters and irony. To me, the Pussycat Dolls look like cartoons, but perhaps to younger girls, they look like real women. I watch The OC with the sense that it is a similar overblown drama to Dawson's Creek (albeit with a better soundtrack) and although I'm not suggesting that teenagers take everything they watch on TV literally, popular programmes still have a massive effect. The "likes" and "whatevers" in my vocabulary can only come from exposure to American TV in my teen years.

They did not exist before then, and they've been a curse to get rid of ever since. So imagine the impression that is left on young minds when everything they watch on TV features relentless sexual storylines.

Boundaries are continuously pushed. It would be commercial suicide to envisage a new women's drama/comedy with less sex than Sex & The City, or a new teen drama that was less risque than The OC.

If anything, it has caused an era of forced experimentation.

Previously, sex and learning about sex were relatively private experiences. Now, young girls are expected to have multiple lesbian flings. This is not all courtesy of Marissa's brief lesbian relationship in The OC, or Madonna kissing Britney Spears at the MTV Awards, though certainly both popularised it, but also part of the trend of lesbianism as male gratification. On Big Brother, all the girls kiss other girls. Lesbianism, or at least pornography's interpretation of lesbianism, where heterosexual women momentarily forget that neither has a penis but go at it anyway, has become another feature of the voyeuristic world of teenage sexuality. And at the other end of the scale, men are expected to act with increased masculinity . . .

aggressive, chauvinist and with gigolo zeal . . . lest they are accused of being a "faggot".

Freedom expects responsibility, and we unreasonably expect responsibility from our children despite refusing to infringe with discipline and rationality on their lifestyle, the Hallmark-esque industry of the teenager. In return, we expect them to be surly, and to misbehave to the point of deviance.

Young people seem to spend more time with each other than ever before, perhaps because their parents are busy, or are committed to providing them with their personal freedom.

Personally, I can't remember the last time I saw a teenager walking down the street with a nonteenager. You imitate and reflect your peers' actions until they become the norm. Unfortunately, the norm for Irish teenagers is beyond acceptable behaviour, and one which will have lasting and damaging effects on their psyche.

Sex matters. And like most things that matter, it is complicated. While laws need to be in place to protect Ireland's young people from abuse, and to punish those who abuse, sex is too complex to be regulated with the black-and-white bluntness that the legal system expresses.

There is a difference between accepting behaviour and reflecting reality, which is why the age of consent needs to be resolved, but placing an age limit that makes no impression on teenagers is not any kind of answer. Perhaps we're so reluctant to engage with this whole issue because talking about it would reveal more than we would care to digest. Maybe if we did, then we would have to accept the reasons children are having sex, and the reality that, as a society, we are both fostering and ignoring a damaged generation.