South Carolina Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Is the Media to Blame?

Posted 11/04/08

A recent report from the RAND Corporation has concluded that… wait for it… high exposure to sexual content on TV has an impact on the likelihood that teens will become pregnant. In fact youth who are taking in high amounts of sexual content on TV are twice as likely as their peers to get pregnant or cause a pregnancy. Take a moment to check out the report’s highlights.

Well, phew! Isn’t that a relief. Now we can get back to blaming the media about all life’s ills. For a minute there I was afraid that we didn’t have enough research to totally excuse parents, educators, faith leaders, community members and caring adults from their role caring for children. I hear a bus coming… anyone care to stand here and throw the media under it??

To their credit, the authors concluded among other things that:

· Media literacy instruction in middle and high school can help teens think more critically about the relative absence of negative consequences of sex in TV portrayals and encourage thinking about alternative outcomes to those seen on TV.

· Parents need to monitor their teens’ TV viewing and provide education about the consequences of sex.

Here are a few things that the authors forgot to point out:

Try to explain this one! Unless you have been living under a rock I suspect you would agree with me that the sexual content of the media has increased over the past decade or so. Interestingly enough in that same time the sexual behavior of teens has improved dramatically (rates of sexual activity down; rates of contraceptive use up) and teen pregnancy rates have decreased tremendously (nearly 30% in South Carolina since 1994).

Calling all parents! Despite the findings of this study teens consistently cite their parents as their preferred source of information on love, sex and relationships. Here’s the problem… parents aren’t talking. Here’s the bigger problem… Jamie Lynn and the rest of Hollywood is! Rather than snubbing noses at awful television content now would be a good time for parents to understand the value of media as a teaching tool and capitalize on the thousands of pre-wrapped teachable moments that appear on the big screen every day. This does require that parents 1) know what their children are watching; and, 2) be willing to talk about love, sex and relationships.

Media rules… so let’s use it! Maybe I’m just too optimistic, but I see a real opportunity here. As I type, my niece (a freshman at the University of South Carolina) and I are sitting together in my living room. Pondering the impact of media on our lives I realize that both of us are on a laptop (she homeworking… me blogging), the television is on (sans volume) and an ipod is playing our favorite songs. Ahhhh, that quality family time we all dream of! My quick point is this - we are dominated by media and not much is going to change that. If the media has such an impact on sexual behavior and teen pregnancy then it should stand to reason that it can have a similar impact in a positive direction if used properly. Right? Rather than pouting we must start to be proactive about finding ways to use media to our advantage. Rather than running around trying to “turn the lights out” on young people we must get ourselves up to speed with the media mediums they are using. Rather than being overly critical about the negative impacts reported in this study we must be willing to meet youth where they are!

All that rambling to say this: the results of this study don’t surprise me all that much. I doubt that anyone would disagree with the fact that the sexual content of television these days is a bit out of control. All I am saying is that if we think that the age old question of “why do teens get pregnant” has been answered by these results we’ve all missed the boat. Stay the course folks… media consumption most likely explains a part, but certainly not all of this situation. We’ve got a lot of work left to do!