Researchers at the Rand Corporation have found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to sex on TV are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who watch fewer programs.
CNN.com: “A central message from the study is that there needs to be more dialogue about sex in the media, particularly among parents and their children, said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND.
‘We know that parents are busy, but sitting down and watching shows together with their teen, talking about the character portrayals, talking about what they just witnessed, and really using it as a teachable moment is really, I think, a good recommendation from this research,’ Chandra said.
To measure exposure, the researchers used a method developed by another research group evaluating 23 shows for sexual content. Then, they asked teenagers how frequently they watched each of those shows, and developed a score based on exposure to the shows. Watch the results of the study
‘We know that if a child is watching more than an hour of TV a day, we know there’s a sexual scene in [the] content every 10 minutes, then they’re getting a fair amount of sexual content,’ Chandra said.
Melody Monroe of Norfolk, Virginia, who had her first child when she was 17, said she agrees that sex on television contributes to teen pregnancy. Monroe, who shared some of her views on iReport.com, recalls watching shows on Lifetime Television with her mother that were ‘almost soft porn,’ with kissing and bedroom scenes.”
Personally I think the ones not getting in trouble are the geekier crowd who don’t watch those type of shows and have realistic views about their actions and their repercussions…that geeks don’t have sex for the first time until well in their 20s.
