Media's Sex Deluge Impacts Teens
by Jason Collum
May 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A new study finds the media's constant bombardment of sexual messages aimed at young people does affect them mentally and physically.The stream of sexual messages also affects the worldview of teens, according to study author Joe McIlhaney of The Medical Institute for Sexual Health. "They have more permissive attitudes towards premarital sexual activity," he said, "and then they think that having sex is beneficial."
The average teenager spends about a third of each day in contact with some form of media -- print, radio, television or the Internet -- and what he or she sees can actually affect brain development.
"The teen brain is malleable," McIlhaney said. "The nerve cells themselves physically grow different, depending on what they're exposed to."
Indeed, the number of youth having premarital sex and contracting sexually transmitted diseases is cause for alarm. Approximately 46 percent of high schools students have had sexual intercourse -- 6.6 percent of them before the age of 13, and 14 percent of them with four or more partners, according to statistics gathered by the Medical Institute.
This is one reason it is important for parents to watch and listen to what their children are tuned in to, and talk with them about it.
"If parents sit and watch with their kids and talk to them about what they're seeing and hearing, it seems to mitigate almost all the negative affects," said Dr. Douglas Gentile, director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family. "If they sit and watch with them but don't talk about it, it seems to enhance the negative effects, because then the parents are giving tacit approval."
McIlhaney says his group's study makes one thing clear: sexual imagery and content is finding children and teens everywhere. As he puts it: "Even if they tried, kids can't escape it."
Jason Collum is a staff writer for AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. This article appeared in the May 2004 issue.
