Studies show how violence and sex on television impacts children

Believe it or not, there are many students around my age who believe that media content does not have an impact on youth behavior.  Maybe they should read this study that appeared this morning on the ABC News web site:

The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens areexposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at anearly age, a new study says.

The University of North Carolina study, published in today's issueof the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who viewmore sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to havesexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old.

"Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexualnorms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind ofsexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active," the studyauthors state.

And, as similar past studies have noted, "one of the strongestprotective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parentalcommunication about sex."

Now of course, this is a very complex topic.  The ABC News report makes the study look like it does not have all the answers.  For example, ABC only took into account white teenagers, even though the study itself factored in all races.  Did ABC think that only white parents were going to visit their web site?  Today more than ever, we live in a multi-ethnic society; and many would conclude that news organizations with the intent to help us learn more about ourselves should not favor one race over the other.  There are African-American and Mexican-American parents that would benefit from this research just as much as European-Americans.

Also, Bloomberg News explained how the study factored in the media content that teens were exposed to, and correlated those to the results:

Surveys cited by the study said white adolescents in theU.S. spent an average of five to six hours a day with some formof media that showed frequent, glamorized and consequence-freesexual activity and black youth spent even more time.

"Media is a powerful sex educator, but not always in thebest interest of children,'' Brown said.  "Desperate Housewives'could use condoms. Why not? On reality programs, let's get real.People do use condoms. What's missing in the media are the threeCs. Rarely is there a commitment, contraceptives orconsequences.''

Studies like this that help vindicate the belief held by the vast majority of American parents that censorship of violent and sexual content on television is more of a good than a violation of liberty.