A few clicks away, the online world of T-shirt Hell encourages customers to send in photos of themselves or family members wearing the company's products. Among the montage of images posted on the website were sweet-faced infants and toddlers wearing shirts branded with jokes like ''Hung like a Pony'' or ''Hung like a Five Year Old''.

But what is the price when kids become props for seedy jokes among adults?

Many health professionals argue that a sex-soaked culture is taking an insidious toll on the emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing of children and young adolescents.

''It's not only about other, older children reading messages like that [on the jumpsuit]; it's also about what the parent is doing by placing their child in a sexualised space,'' says the Sydney Children's Hospital psychiatrist Jennifer Harris. ''You are putting two things together that don't go together. Babyhood should be about protection, nurturing and gentleness, not adult humour and cynicism.''

The effect of the combined onslaught of round-the-clock social media, obsession with body image and constant bombardment of sexual messaging in everything from music videos to cartoons, games, films, TV, magazines, advertising and the online world is worrying increasing numbers of child health experts here and overseas.

A report commissioned for the British Department of Education in 2011 describes it as the ''wallpaper'' of children's lives.

''We are all living in an increasingly sexual and sexualised culture, although it is far from clear how we arrived at this point,'' says the report, titled Letting Children Be Children.

''The rapidly changing technological environment has its benefits in so many ways but has also made the seamier side of humanity inescapable.''

This week, the noted child psychologist and author Steve Biddulph weighed into the debate with a tirade against a society that has conditioned people, particularly women and girls, to see themselves primarily as ''product''.

One in five girls, he claimed in later comments, were suffering to some degree from anxiety manifesting as self-harm, eating disorders, binge drinking, bullying and risky sex. ''My picture of many of today's girls is that they are standing in a lonely windy place. There are hyenas - corporate and individual - circling around them. But we also have to ask: how did we come to leave them so alone?'' he said.

A professor of developmental psychiatry at Monash University, Louise Newman, finds five-year-old girls telling her they are ''ugly and fat''.

''There does need to be a broader public discussion about what the implications are of some of this body image preoccupation, of beauty and sexual attractiveness being the marker of personal worth,'' Newman maintains.

''There is a contrary view out there that there are positive things about sexual expression and so on; indeed you will get some academics who argue that those of us who raise concerns about this are just being sexually conservative.''

But she says this overlooks the impact on children for whom ''preoccupation with appearance can be very negative for their overall development''.

Personally, she says, ''I think it should be reframed as a child protection issue.''

Some parents are not helping. ''I see pre-teens coming in in PVC trench coats and high heels - and you ask, what's going on?'' Harris says. ''I think there is a desire these days to want to make children happy; time-pressed parents think maybe that's the fashion and I should just go along with it.''

Newman also sees children ''dressed up like they might be sex workers, the midriff stuff, sexy underwear. Sometimes people think it's cute, but they don't think about the implications and the potential negative developmental impact''.

Other parents just don't have the confidence, the British report finds, to hold out against what seem to be prevailing norms ''for fear of being labelled a prude or out of touch''.

Evidence from Britain and the US suggests that apart from psychological risks for susceptible children, there can be physical risks for girls swept up in so-called ''raunch culture''.

Sexual activity is starting younger, with more partners at earlier ages. Anecdotally in Sydney, parents of teenagers now hear tales of 14-year-old and 15-year-old girls at parties competing for male favours by offering oral sex.

''We know that the younger people engage in sexual activity, the more likely they are to have unwanted sex and greater sexual health issues,'' says ethicist Dr Emma Rush of Charles Sturt University, who wrote a report seven years ago called Corporate Paedophilia.

Paradoxically, she maintains, teenagers today seem as trapped as their predecessors in the 1950s. The challenge of that era was surmounting the idea that ''sex was not OK and not for girls''. Now, she says, the reverse applies; the issue is ''managing not to do it''.

While some might dismiss such worries as moral panic, the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Steve Hambleton, says concern about the trend is almost unanimous among his 27,000 members.

Last April the AMA called on the government to inquire into what it terms the ''premature sexualisation of children in marketing and advertising''.

This followed a 2008 Senate committee report on the issue which was meant to produce a follow-up review 18 months later. That review never took place.

Hambleton says he expects little from Canberra between now and the election, but that the ''early days of a new government, whichever side wins'' might produce a more sympathetic ear.

Another advocate for greater regulation is Melinda Tankard Reist, the anti-porn activist, author and co-founder of the Collective Shout movement, which campaigns against sexual exploitation of women and girls.

Tankard Reist and her lobby have had some headline-grabbing wins, such as helping fuel the campaign which forced Kmart to withdraw an underwear line for girls in late 2011.

The offending garments carried slogans such as ''call me'' and '' I love rich boys''.

Last year she opened negotiations with Kmart to sign a so-called ''corporate social responsibility pledge'' that would subject the chain's merchandise to a test of whether or not products ''objectified'' women and girls. Progress has been slow of late, though Kmart told the Herald that it would resume talks with her next week.

Collective Shout were also influential in the campaign against the 2011 visit to Melbourne of the US child beauty pageant star Eden Wood, then a waxed, frilled and painted six-year-old replica of adult beauty contestants.

More recently, Tankard Reist has been pressuring online booksellers to withdraw titles such as Tina Sits On Daddy's Face, billed on the mainstream Barnes & Noble website this week as a ''pseudo-incest daddy fantasy''.

''Every day I think I can't see something worse and I do,'' Reist says. ''Just this week I found a gaming console for boys, which is a four-breasted women, which you operate by pressing on the breasts …This stuff is everywhere - pornified, hypersexualised images of women and girls pretty much everywhere you look.''

She spends many of her days in schools talking to parents, teachers and children and ''trying to equip girls to recognise the harms of a toxic culture''. But she claims government has ''offloaded their ethical duties [onto] citizens like me and my friends''.

Calls for greater regulation are strongly resisted by industry lobbies such as the Australian Association of National Advertisers, which argues it has overhauled its voluntary industry codes to bring them more in line with what it calls ''prevailing community standards''.

Acting chief executive Alina Bain points to a new provision in the association's code of ethics which says advertisers and marketers should ''not employ sexual appeal in a manner which is exploitative and degrading of any individual or group of people''.

Asked whether the jumpsuit sold on Amazon (which admittedly is outside her group's remit) is an example of prevailing community standards, she replied: ''The world is consumer-driven, isn't it? At the end of the day, there is demand there I guess. I have a personal reaction to it but I wouldn't seek out that product.''

Not all health professionals believe stronger regulation is the answer. Newman and Harris, for instance, argue that more education in schools and parental vigilance and supervision are better defences. Harris says parents must place firm limits on social media use by younger children who may no longer find ''sanctuary'' in the home because of the intrusion of sexual content on sites such as Facebook.

Biddulph has recently argued for an ''aunts' army'' to widen the circle of supportive adults around girls and bolster the resources of time-poor families.

Harris and Newman also want more research on what Australian children are experiencing, and how they are reacting. But Rush says waiting for national studies that could take years is losing precious time.

''We need a systemic fix through government,'' Rush says. ''It's not easy to work out what it should be, but the conversation needs to be had.''

In the meantime, Rush adds, ''all the research shows that warm but firm parenting has the best outcome for kids, and often what parents are doing is the warm but not the firm''.

Helpful sites for parents

cybersmart.gov.au

raisingchildren.net.au

GetNetWise from the internet education foundation

Hetors World

smh.com.au