OPINION: TV Sex & Violence Influences Behavior

By Broadside Staff Writer Sabra Hayes

Television and other media outlets cannot make you pregnant, but yet again the problems resulting from lack of good parenting are being blamed on the media. Researchers at the RAND Corporation have begun to document how exposure to racy and sexual media is affecting teen pregnancy rates.The RAND Corporation found that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV were twice as likely to become pregnant before they reach age 20 as teens watching less of this material; however, they did not test what parental influence was placed upon the issue of sex.

More than a quarter of the participants dropped out of the RAND study, and the authors simply ignored them. However, those who dropped out of the study might have differed in significant ways from those who remained in the study, and their absence may have led to invalid findings.

Of the 1461 teens that remained in the study, roughly 10 percent refused to say whether they were sexually active. Of the remaining 1315 teens, 571, only 43 percent, were not sexually active at all. At a minimum, the 571 teens who were not sexually active should have served as a control group for the sexually active group. The amount of television viewing with sexual content done by the active and non-active teens was recorded but not released. One would think that this would be imperative to the scientific nature of the results and that this information would drastically change the nature of the study.

In the end, RAND looked at the television viewing habits of those teens that did not drop out of the study, were willing to divulge their sexual status, and claimed that they were sexually active. After eliminating those who refused to divulge whether or not they had been involved in a pregnancy, only 718 teens were left of an initial group of 2003 that had started the study. In other words, the authors only looked at 36 percent of study participants (all of whom were sexually active) and ignored the other 64 percent (including everyone who was not sexually active). This leads this experiment and its accusations to be faultily placing the blame on the media for teen pregnancy.

Over 30 years ago, studies found that violence and aggression in children had a direct link to television. Now, television has been linked to teen-age pregnancy. The demand for this link is a demand for why so many teens have become pregnant. The lack of parental involvement and the lack of sexual education from a perspective other than abstinence only are causes of teen pregnancy, not television viewing habits.

The information regarding safe sex practices are severely limited for teens. This study wants to put the blame on the media when in fact it is the lack of education of safe sex. Researchers for the Journal of Adolescent Health have found that one in four teens have received abstinence-only education. Nine percent received no sex education at all. The other two-thirds received comprehensive instruction with discussion of birth control. Teens who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to report becoming pregnant or impregnating someone than those who received no sex education.
There has been a big push to get condoms and other contraceptives in public schools, a place where kids spend eight hours a day during the week. Sex needs to be brought out of the bedroom and into the light. If we talk about it and teach teens about it, perhaps less of them will end up pregnant. Hiding it and pretending abstinence works and blaming the pregnancies on what kids see on TV is not working towards a solution.

The only solution for teen pregnancy lies in the hands of the guardians. The time has come for sexual safety to be taught not only in the schools, but by the parents as well. The only evidence that this so called research by RAND has brought to the table, is that teens are getting pregnant. This is an issue that has been around for years and can only be stopped by education, not by blaming the media. It is the duty of the schools and the parents to teach teens about sex and about how to handle it in a safe manner. The time for judgment and hiding from the truth about sex is over. This study by the RAND has shown us that it is time to abolish abstinence-only education and to educate parents as to how to talk to their teens about sex, and to no longer place the blame on TV and media.