In last summer's prize-winning
R-rated film "Me and You and
Everyone We Know," a barely
pubescent boy is seduced into oral
sex by two girls perhaps a year
older, and his 6-year-old brother
logs on to a pornographic chat
room and solicits a grown woman
with instant messages about
"poop."
Is this what your teenage
children are watching? If so, what
message are they getting about
sexual mores, and what effect will
it have on their behavior?
The journal
Pediatrics addressed the topic
last July in a supplemental
report, "Impact of the Media on
Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and
Behaviors." It is an important
and, sad to say, much neglected
subject. The report, based on a
thorough review of scientific
literature, was requested by
Congress and supported by the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and the University of
Texas Health Science Center at
Houston.
A Neglected Subject
Pursued
I'll start with the bottom
line: "Although a great deal is
known about the effects of mass
media on other adolescent
behaviors, such as eating,
smoking and drinking, we know
basically nothing about the
effects of mass media on
adolescent sexual behaviors," the
report's principal investigator,
S. Liliana Escobar-Chaves of the
university's Center for Health
Promotion and Prevention Research,
concluded.
But to hazard a guess based on
clear evidence that media
representations influence teenage
eating, smoking and drinking
habits, adolescents are almost
certainly affected — negatively —
by sexual references and images
from television, in movies and
video games, in music, in
magazines and on Web sites.
Who's monitoring what teenagers
see, read and hear about sex? For
the most part, no one. "There is
growing concern that youth are
accessing media in environments
isolated from the supervision or
guidance of parents or other
adults," the report says. "The
average American youth spends
one-third of each day with various
forms of mass media, mostly
without parental oversight."
Despite the advent of V-chips,
movie ratings and televised
warnings of appropriateness for
young people, American teenagers
have no trouble getting access to
graphic sexual presentations. And
no one restricts what they hear in
popular songs. The effect of
abstinence-only education pales by
comparison with the many graphic
messages that portray sexual
activity — especially unprotected
sex outside of marriage — to be a
part of our culture as normal and
acceptable as eating a Big Mac or
drinking a Coke.
The proportion of high school
students who say they have had sex
has declined some and the rate of
teenage pregnancies has dropped,
but the numbers remain staggering.
The report states: "Approximately
47 percent of high school students
have had sexual intercourse. Of
these, 7.4 percent report having
sex before the age of 13, and 14
percent have had four or more
sexual partners."
Each year, nearly 900,000
teenage girls in the United States
become pregnant (340,000 are 17 or
younger). The rates of
sexually transmitted diseases
are higher among teenagers than
among adults, and 35 percent of
girls have been pregnant at least
once by age 20. In 2002,
chlamydia infections were six
times as prevalent among sexually
active adolescent girls as they
were among sexually active women.
The risks don't end with
pregnancy and disease. "Data
suggest that sexually active
adolescents are at high risk for
depression and
suicide," the report states.
"Early sexual experience among
adolescents has also been
associated with other potentially
health-endangering behaviors, such
as alcohol, marijuana, and other
drug use."
In an accompanying article, Dr.
Joe S. McIlhaney Jr. of the
Medical Institute for Sexual
Health in Austin, Tex., wrote,
"Many parents and some physicians
underestimate the negative and
lifelong impact of early sexual
activity." The main report said
that, in hindsight, many sexually
active teenage girls wished they
had waited longer.
Exposure Is Widespread
Television is the best-studied
medium, and the average teenager
watches it for more than three
hours a day. Two-thirds of
youngsters 8 to 18 have TV's in
their bedrooms, and two-thirds
live in homes with cable TV,
providing unsupervised access to
sex talk and scenes.
The sexual content of TV is
pervasive and increasing. A Kaiser
Family Foundation study found that
"the shows most watched by
adolescents in 2001-2002 had
'unusually high' amounts of sexual
content compared with TV as a
whole: 83 percent of programs
popular with teens had sexual
content, and 20 percent contained
explicit or implicit intercourse."
"On average," it continued,
"each hour of programming popular
with teens had 6.7 scenes that
included sexual topics."
The foundation study found that
"characters involved in sexual
behavior in TV programs rarely
experience any negative
consequences."
"Programs with a primary
emphasis on sexual risk and
responsibility themes represent
only 1 percent of all shows that
contain sexual content," it
continues. Furthermore, only 3
percent of sex scenes observed
involved protection against
disease and unwanted pregnancy.
What little is known about the
effects of television sex on
teenage attitudes and behavior
comes primarily from a national
telephone survey conducted twice,
in 2001 and again in 2002, among
1,792 youths ages 12 to 17.
Growing Up Faster
The survey showed that watching
TV with sexual content
artificially aged the children:
those who watched more than
average behaved sexually as though
they were 9 to 17 months older and
watched only average amounts.
Twelve-year-olds who watched the
most behaved sexually like 14- and
15-year-olds who watched the
least.
The research indicated that
adolescents who watched shows with
sexual content tended to
overestimate the frequency of
certain sexual behaviors and to
have more permissive attitudes
toward premarital sex.
As for movies, two studies that
analyzed the content of top movie
videos rented by young people
revealed a large amount of sexual
content, mostly sex among
unmarried partners.
The effects of such viewing
have been minimally studied. In a
2001 study of sexually active
black girls ages 14 to 18, those
who were exposed to X-rated movies
were more likely to have multiple
sexual partners, to have sex more
often, to test positively for
chlamydia and to be less likely to
use contraception.
The music videos aimed at
teenagers are rife with sexuality
or eroticism, much of it explicit,
the report noted. But the effects
of this exposure have yet to be
studied. Likewise, nothing of a
scientific nature is known about
the effects of magazines,
advertising or video or computer
games on adolescents' attitudes
and behavior toward sex.
As for the Internet, one
national survey of 10-
to-17-year-olds found that one in
five had "inadvertently
encountered explicit sexual
content, and one in five had been
exposed to an unwanted sexual
solicitation while online."
The report called for better
studies to assess the effects of
sexuality in the mass media on
adolescent beliefs and behavior,
especially studies that measure
over time how the cumulative
effects of sexual content in
different media affect teenage
sexuality.
