CHAPEL HILL, NC – According to a new study conducted by the University of North Carolina, adolescents who are exposed to a large amount of sexual content through various forms of popular media are more likely to be sexually active between the ages of 14 and 16 than their peers who have minimal exposure to such content.White children between 12 and 14 years of age exposed to sex through the media are 2.2 times more likely to engage in “early sexual activity” than peers of the same age who reported the lowest level of media exposure, according to the study, which was published in the April issue of journal Pediatrics.
According to the study, black teens are more influenced by their parents’ expectations and the sexual activity of their friends than by the media.
In the portion of the study covering music, researchers found that 40-percent of the 170 songs analyzed had lyrics that contained sexual content. Among the artists considered were Destiny’s Child, Ja Rule, Jay Z and Nelly, according to Jane Brown, chief researcher and professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
“In our analysis, movies and music were the most powerful influences,” said Brown. “The media they’re using doesn’t always show up on the Top 10 lists. Most of the kids are listening to rap.”
Other forms of media in the survey, including movies, magazines and television shows, contained about 11-percent sexual content, according to Brown.
“The main thing we’ve done is look beyond television. It’s not only television; other media affect sexual behavior,” Brown said.
Critics have honed in on the central weaknesses of the study immediately, noting that the survey only includes 1,017 teens in three North Carolina school districts, does not take into account exposure to sexually explicit content on the internet, and ignores a significant number of other factors that contribute to the sexual activity of teens.
“It makes sense to think that young people create their ideas about appropriate sexual behavior from the messages they receive and that these messages are most attractively packaged by the media,” said Julia A. Ericksen, chair of the department of sociology at Temple University. “But demonstrating this is difficult because teens experience so many influences on their sexual attitudes, and sorting them out is not easy.”
It’s also open to question whether teens get more interested in sexual activity after media exposure to sexual content, or whether teens already interested in sex are more likely to seek out sexually explicit media.
“”It is likely that teens who are most interested in sex are both more likely to watch shows on television with sex in them and more likely to experiment sexually,” Ericksen said.
The authors of the study, which carries the cumbersome title “Sexy Media Matters: Exposure to Sexual Content in Music, Movies, Television, and Magazines, Predicts Black and White Adolescent Sexual Behavior,” said that media literacy education for parents, increasing exposure to more age-appropriate media, physician education and intervention by healthcare professionals all provide opportunities to help reduce the negative effects of sexually-charged media.
