Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy, Says Report
By Alice Park Monday, Nov. 03, 2008
From TIME.com
Sex on TV has come a long way in the past few years. Anyone who saw the first episode of 90210— a pair of students engage in oral sex in the first episode of the new sequel to Beverly Hills 90210 — can attest to that.
The question that has been debated by parents, psychologists and media critics for years is whether such racy content has an adverse affect on young viewers. Now researchers at the Rand Corporation say they have documented for the first time how such exposure can influence teen pregnancy rates. They found that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV were twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20.
"The relationship between exposure of this kind of content on TV and the risk of later pregnancy is fairly strong,' says Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist and the study's author. "Even if it were diminished by other contributing factors, the association still holds.' Such consistent exposure may explain in part why the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is double that of other industrialized nations. Chandra and her team interviewed 1461 teens aged 12 to 17 by phone, speaking to them three times between 2001 and 2004. Where previous studies exploring the effect of TV content on teen pregnancy relied on one-time snapshots of the adolescents' behavior, Chandra believes the continuity of her study reinforces the strength of the relationship she found between exposure to sexual content on television and pregnancy.
Previous research has revealed two major ways that this glamorized perception of sex contributes to teen pregnancy — by encouraging teens to become sexually active early in their adolescence, and by promoting inconsistent use of contraceptives. And, notes Dr. Donald Shifrin, former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Communications, add to this the fact that children are accessing television not just via the big screen at home but on the computer and increasingly on cell phones, and the opportunities for exposure to the sex-based content just explode. "It's not just appointment television, now it's anytime television,' says Shifrin. "And this study was begun seven years ago, so if it were done today, [the authors] would probably find more evidence of sex on screens that affects youngsters' behaviors.'
Yet it's not likely, nor realistic, to expect the television and movie industries to curb the amount of sexual content in their products. That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics created the Media Matters campaign more than a decade ago, to not only promote awareness within the industry of how influential their TV shows and movies are to youngsters, but also to alert parents to the critical role they play in monitoring and mediating what their children watch. Having ammunition in the form of study-based association such as Chandra documented just gives the message more impact.
Reference: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1855842,00.html
Reflective essay:
The article above talks about how the rate of teenage pregnancy is linked to the amount of sex content viewed on TV which is related to the issue of the effects of mass media on socialization. Researchers have found out that pregnancies were twice as common among those who said they watched such shows regularly, compared with teens who said they hardly ever saw them and the rate in US is double that of the industrialized nations. This glamorized perception of sex contributes to teen pregnancy in two major ways – by encouraging teens to become sexually active early in their adolescence, and by promoting unprotected sex. Add to this fact that today, with the advance in technology, children are accessing the tv shows not just via the big screen at home but on computers and increasingly on cellphones.
From the functionalist perspective, the mass media is an influential and important agent of socialization and encourage social integration by exposing the entire society shared beliefs, values and norms. However, the role of mass media in sexual behaviour of teenagers through rapid growth of programming with excessive sexual content and how much influence they actually exert over their audience have become a very controversial issue.
Why teen pregnancy occur mostly in US compared to other developed countries is because in US, adults are increasingly absent from the lives of adolescents. According to Hersch, it is because “American society has left its children behind at the cost of progress in the workplace” (Hersch, 1998:19). More American adults are working longer hours than ever before and consequently, they have less time to spend with their children at home and the declining adult supervision and guidance leave youth more susceptible to the influence of the mass media and peer groups.
The most common outcome of teenage pregnancy is abortion - another main issue debated by the crowds. Some people view abortion as killing an innocent human being, therefore wrong and immoral, while some others do not agree that unborn must be classified as human. Those who do not carry out abortion and decide to bear the child are most likely to drop out from school and therefore reduces educational achievement.
In my point of view, sexual content on TV does not necessarily influence teenagers to engage in early sexual activity. It depends on the individual's self-control, judgement and their degree of religious faith. To deal with this problem, I think the government should step in and encourage more awareness campaigns and sex education in public schools and parents should be more alert and monitor what their young children are watching on TV and help to filter messages sex-filled shows are sending.
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