Sex in media driving teens: Study

New Delhi: Explicit sexual content in films, songs with sexually charged lyrics and magazines with pornographic content are increasingly predicting the sexual behaviour of teenagers.

According to a study published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics, children who are more exposed to sexual content on TV and in magazines are more likely to engage in early sexual intercourse.

Over a thousand children in North Carolina, were questioned about the kind of content they watched on television and then interviewed again after a period of two years.

Two years later when the children were questioned again, it was found that the exposure to sexual content in media had led to an acceleration in their sexual activity.

By age 16, according to the study, 55 per cent of the white teens had engaged in sexual intercourse.

However, while the study held true for white Americans, it was observed that black children were more influenced by perceptions of their parents' expectations and their friends' sexual behavior rather than what they saw and heard in the media.

Jane D Brown, lead author of the study, stated that the reason some children preferred more sexually explicit content to others was puberty.

As kids mature, they want answers to question that they may not be comfortable with asking their parents.

The media then becomes their supplier of information because the other sources of information - parents, schools and churches - are more often than not saying "Say no to sex."

The study, feels the author, is a kind of alert for parents that they need to start talking to their children and that they should be more open to answering questions that they might have earlier thought were uncomfortable.

Parents, Brown feels, must express their disapproval of early sexual intercourse, firmly but in a way that makes the child understand the improtance of the value system.

She says if the parent is approachable, then children are less likely to get influenced by the media.

What is your take on the issue? Click here to post your comments.