• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Teen Study: Media Use, Sexual Activity Linked: N.C. Adolescents Drawn to Explicit Content More Likely to Have Sex

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Mark Washburn, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Apr. 3--N.C. teens drawn to sexually-charged music, magazines, movies and TV are about twice as likely to have intercourse by age 16 than those with less exposure.

A major study at UNC Chapel Hill, to be published this month in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, tracked 1,017 teens from Durham, Orange and Granville counties over two years, surveying them on their sexual behavior and media use.

Each teen's "sexual media diet" was calculated based on the sexual content in 308 different TV shows, movies, songs and magazines the teens were regularly exposed to. Researchers found that sex content in teen media ranged from banter to depictions of sexual intercourse.

But the study found that parents who talk to teens about sex are generally more influential than media.

Teens whose parents communicated clearly that they did not want them to have sex were less likely to have had sexual intercourse by age 16 than those who perceived less disapproval of teen sex from parents.

Jane Brown, a professor in UNC's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the study's principal investigator, said teens seem to turn to the media for sex information because they aren't getting the information elsewhere.

The study is part of a five-year project at UNC examining teens and media. Among the project's findings:

-- Eleven percent of media used by early adolescents -- TV, movies, magazines and music -- contains sexual content.

-- Forty percent of early adolescents' music contains sexual content. By genre, researchers say, 57 percent of R&B music (such as Destiny's Child and Janet Jackson), 48 percent of rap music (such as Snoop Dog and Ludacris) and 19 percent of heavy metal music (such as Incubus and Metallica) was catalogued as sexual.

-- Less than one percent of teen media content focuses on sexual health, contraception and consequences.

-- Black teens are more exposed to sexual media content than white teens.

-- Television commercials are a major source of sexual content. Of major broadcast and cable networks used by teens, Comedy Central and MTV was among the leaders with highest sex content in commercials.

-- Among shows popular among teens that indexed high for sexual content were UPN's "WWE Smackdown," and MTV's "Total Request Live."

------------

ON THE WEB

The UNC project: www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/teenmedia/ Tools for parents: www.mediafamily.org/ Talking with teens: www.talkingwithkids.org Teens to teens: www.sxetc.org

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Unknown:LAF,

Source: The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

More News in this Category