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Little Known about Impact on Teens of Sexuality in Media
Public health researchers urge studies to document effects of pervasive media
Whether a Janet Jackson breast flashed during the halftime performance of Super Bowl XXXVIII or an open-mouthed kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears during the MTV Video Music Awards show, sexual content has become inescapable throughout popular media.
Researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston released a report in February documenting how largely unexplored is the role of mass media in shaping adolescent sexual activity.
The new report, produced for the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, is a critical review of scientific articles and other sources on the impact of mass media, including the Internet, on the sexual knowledge, beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of adolescents.
“This research is important because parents and people in general need to know how pervasive the media are,” said Liliana Escobar-Chaves, Dr.P.H., principal investigator of the study and a School of Public Health faculty associate. “We have done a critical evaluation of scientific literature and have only found incomplete data on the impact of sexual content in the media.”
The report, “Impact of the Media on Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors,” breaks down the exposure, content and effects that television, advertising, movies, radio, music, magazines and the Internet have on young people.
For example, researchers found the average teenager spends at least three to four hours per day watching television. For every hour of programming watched by adolescents, an average of 6.7 scenes includes sexual topics, and about 10 percent of scenes portray couples engaging in sexual intercourse.
Escobar-Chaves and colleagues in the school’s Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research cited several studies suggesting an association between media exposure and adolescent sexual behavior, but the studies’ design, sampling procedures and small sample sizes limit the usefulness of drawing a conclusion from them.
“Therefore, we can not gauge the relationship over time between exposure to television and sexual initiation in adolescents,” Escobar-Chaves said.
What investigators are able to determine is that teenagers who are exposed to television with sexual content are more likely to overestimate the frequency of some sexual behaviors, have more permissive attitudes towards premarital sex and think having sex is beneficial.
In movies, radio and popular music, investigators found most young people have seen R-rated movies before the required age of 16. Twenty-two percent of teen-oriented radio segments contain sexual content, ranging from “pretty explicit” to “very explicit,” and 42 percent of top-selling CDs in 1999 contained sexual content. However, investigators noted in the report that there is currently no data available in these areas to evaluate just how the sexual content is affecting adolescents.
The report suggests approaches for future studies, such as refining methodologies to measure exposure to sexual content in media, surveying adolescents to determine their exposure to forms of mass media, and evaluating child, adolescent and parent media literacy programs to determine best-practice interventions.
“We believe this type of research will help us understand mass media impacts on young people and help us to curb some of the startling statistics about adolescent sexual behaviors and attitudes we currently see today,” Escobar-Chaves said.
Funding for the report came from a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Other authors include: Susan Tortolero, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology; Christine Markham, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral sciences; and Barbara Low, Dr.P.H., postdoctoral fellow, all from the School of Public Health’s Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research.
— Pamela Cathion, Public Affairs