Background. Early sexual initiation is an important social and health issue. A recent survey suggested that most sexually experienced teens wish they had waited longer to have intercourse; other data indicate that unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are more common among those who begin sexual activity earlier. The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested that portrayals of sex on entertainment television (TV) may contribute to precocious adolescent sex. Approximately two-thirds of TV programs contain sexual content. However, empirical data examining the relationships between exposure to sex on TV and adolescent sexual behaviors are rare and inadequate for addressing the issue of causal effects.
Design and Participants. We conducted a national longitudinal survey of 1792 adolescents, 12 to 17 years of age. In baseline and 1-year follow-up interviews, participants reported their TV viewing habits and sexual experience and responded to measures of more than a dozen factors known to be associated with adolescent sexual initiation. TV viewing data were combined with the results of a scientific analysis of TV sexual content to derive measures of exposure to sexual content, depictions of sexual risks or safety, and depictions of sexual behavior (versus talk about sex but no behavior).
Outcome Measures. Initiation of intercourse and advancement in noncoital sexual activity level, during a 1-year period.
Results. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that adolescents who viewed more sexual content at baseline were more likely to initiate intercourse and progress to more advanced noncoital sexual activities during the subsequent year, controlling for respondent characteristics that might otherwise explain these relationships. The size of the adjusted intercourse effect was such that youths in the 90th percentile of TV sex viewing had a predicted probability of intercourse initiation that was approximately double that of youths in the 10th percentile, for all ages studied. Exposure to TV that included only talk about sex was associated with the same risks as exposure to TV that depicted sexual behavior. African American youths who watched more depictions of sexual risks or safety were less likely to initiate intercourse in the subsequent year.
Conclusions. Watching sex on TV predicts and may hasten adolescent sexual initiation. Reducing the amount of sexual content in entertainment programming, reducing adolescent exposure to this content, or increasing references to and depictions of possible negative consequences of sexual activity could appreciably delay the initiation of coital and noncoital activities. Alternatively, parents may be able to reduce the effects of sexual content by watching TV with their teenaged children and discussing their own beliefs about sex and the behaviors portrayed. Pediatricians should encourage these family discussions.
Comments
Television Becomes The "Educator"
As a teacher, I read with great interest the subject of television’s impact upon teenage initiation of sex. Many high schools are showing an alarming trend of sexual encounters during school hours. The school system I work for has had to deal with sex on school buses, bathrooms and the back of the classrooms at such an alarming rate, they now send issues of sex on campus to the police department for resolution. From my perspective, as an educator, television has been the common denominator facilitating the changes in American youth and the onset of sexual exploration.
If you can change buying habits of the American public with well crafted advertising, why would it not then be equally conceivable that you could change the mores/culture through the same medium as well! When you endlessly legitimize non relational sex on television to young impressionable youth, it should be no surprise when they rationalize the need to indulge themselves at earlier and earlier ages. From my perspective, television has had an enormous impact upon American teenagers decision making process when it comes to sex.
One of the references in this article about sexual initiation was from researcher George Gerber who believed that as television became the “educator” to many viewers, the assumption that what was being viewed was correct, allowed that industry to influence consumer opinions on everything from toothpaste to sex. This, in my opinion, has contributed dramatically to a change in American culture as more and more children and young adults are watching endless hours of value and cultural altering television.
I couldn’t agree more.
Limitations need more attention
While the limitations of this study were mentioned, they were dismissed too quickly. Certainly the media was not informed of some of the serious faults, or they chose to ignore them.
For instance, in reading the methodology used in data collection, researchers state that parents had to give consent in order for the youth to participate. It seems obvious that this would skew the populalation who did end up participating...in any number of ways.
Also, while the reseachers did a good job trying to eliminate other factors which could effect the finding, such as parental education, there are a number of "soft" factors which could only be evaluated through a very extensive interview. Amoung these factors is the kind of relationship the youth had with the adults raising them.
For such a complex behaviour as sexual expression, this is a far too simple equation, particularly in light of the prevailing political pressures in the USA surrounding the area of youth and sexuality.
Kim Martyn
Other Programming Should Be Explored
I grew up with cable television and plenty of sexually explicit programming. I didn't have sex until I was in my 20s, because I saw so many movies-of-the-week about girls who got pregnant, or people living with AIDs, or date rapes. Not all shows that deal with sex are giving the impression that it's something everyone should be doing. With parental supervision, television can be a useful tool in helping teens understand the consequences of sexual activity. It seemed like friends whose parents were strict about how much television they watched were the first ones to want to rebel, and the ones who didn't know enough about sex to protect themselves.
Chicken or egg?
This article conveys its bias against youthful initiation of sex by announcing that it is a health concern, having just recited that many young people, fully a fourth of sexually active teenagers, get STDs, and that Americans have unplanned pregnancies at a rate "among the highest of all industrialized countries". The implication is that youthful sex is bad per se. This is consistent with the politically conservative bias against sex currently extant in the U.S., even though it is characterized as a health concern.
But behind those statistics is a huge debate about whether to educate teenagers about sex and to assist them in disease prevention -- things that other industrialized countries (read Europe and Canada) have been much more liberal about, resulting in less disease and pregnancy. So the implication is based on false assumptions, yet it colors the entire study.
The fundamental error of this study is "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." It assumes causation when there may be mere coincidence. While it is undeniable that TV can have significant impact on attitudes of many kinds on people of all ages, this study does not control for the possibility that young people seek out programs with sexual content because they have more than average sexual interest and desire, which by itself would tend to translate into earlier sexual activity, whether they watched TV or not. Evidently the survey employed in this study did not bother to ask the respondents about their sexual interest, or whether they considered themselves to have more sexual desire than their peers, or their intentions to become sexually active.
Without that kind of data, it is impossible to establish causation by TV content.
Even the press release for this study reveals bias: "On a positive note, the study found that one group — African American youth — that watched more depictions of sexual risks or safety measures was less likely to begin engaging in sexual intercourse in the subsequent year." Researchers who think it is a good thing that early sexual activity is avoided will tend to design and read the results of their study as reinforcing that bias.
But in this example, it is also fair to ask whether the results are being misread. If sexually interested black youngsters were already engaging in sexual behavior before their exposure to TV, they would not show up in this study. That would leave the group that is less sexually interested, upon whom the erotic content of TV has less effect. If this example supports any conclusion, it supports coincidence rather than causation. Supporting this are studies showing a higher rate of early sexual behavior among blacks; see, e.g., Besharov and Gardiner, "Trends in Teen Sexual Behavior", U. Maryland, May, 1998.
Douglas L. Wilson The Anakosha Corporation Naples, Florida