premiere, cautioning that some scenes "can be triggering."

"Euphoria" is hardly the first young-adult-centric series to graphically portraymature subjects. In 2017, Netflix drama "13 Reasons Why" garnered widespread backlash for its disturbing, uninterrupted scene of a teenage girl (Katherine Langford) slicing her wrists and bleeding to death in a bathtub. A recent study by JAMA Psychiatry found that teen suicide rates rose 13% in the months after the premiere of the show, which also depicted rape and a planned mass schoolshooting in its first two seasons.

Netflix's high school-set "Sex Education," which premiered in January, similarly drew criticism for its frequent nudity, frank discussions about sex and depictions of masturbation. So too have middle-school comedies "Big Mouth," also on Netflix, and Hulu's "PEN15," albeit to a lesser extent. ("Big Mouth"but co-star as awkward best friends trying to survive middle school. The Hulu comedy, which features a mostly teenage cast, playfully tackles pubescent insecurities around first kisses, periods and female masturbation, which Erskine says she had never seen depicted onscreen before in an authentic, funny way.

"The only time I've really seen a woman masturbating was in 'Mulholland Drive,' and she's doing it while crying and she's miserable," Erskine says. "(In real life), it was such a joyful experience for me, but also complicated because it was mixed with shame. I didn't know anyone else who did it."

But by addressing seemingly taboo topics such as masturbation on TV, she believes it can help younger viewers feel less alone.

After "PEN15" premiered in February, "a lot of girls would reach out