Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have found a link
between the amount of adult television children watch and the age at which
teens become sexually active.
Researchers tracked 754 children between the ages 6 and 18
at two stages in their lives, first to see how much adult television they
watched over the weekend as young kids, and later to see the age at which they first became
sexually active. According to Science Daily, “The study found that for every
hour the youngest group of children watched adult-targeted content over the two
sample days, their chances of having sex during early adolescence increased by
33 percent.”
It seems to me that this correlation may have more to do
with uninvolved parents than with TV. Any six-year-old who is allowed to watch
several hours of adult television in a day is not likely to have parents who
will talk to him or her about sex later in life.
This point of view is enforced by a comment made by a lead author
of the study, who said, "Television and movies are among the leading
sources of information about sex and relationships for adolescents.”
That, to me, is far more disturbing than any correlation
established between teen sexual activity and television. If parents and
educators were talking to kids about healthy sexual behavior, they wouldn’t be
nearly as likely to be influenced by the drunken promiscuity portrayed on shows
like The O.C. and Gossip Girl.
I’m certainly no fan of the majority of mainstream television—particularly
not as entertainment for six-year-olds—but it would be much easier, and perhaps
more effective, to raise awareness about the need for parents to openly discuss
healthy sexual behavior with their kids than it would be to substantially shift
the entire foundation of popular culture.
It’s high time that more studies on teen sexuality activity focused
on parent-child relationships, rather than just on the media.
Photo: saidaonline.com
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