The Journal of Adolescent Health (March 2006) found in a new report that “TV is the single biggest influence on the sexual habits of the young.” I have the report before me entitled “The mass media are an important context for adolescents’ sexual behaviour” by Kelly Ladin L’Engle, Ph. D, MPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her paper concludes, “Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in the media, and who perceive greater support from the media for sexual behaviour, report greater intentions to engage in sexual intercourse and more sexual activity. Mass media are an important context for adolescent’s sexual socialization, and media influences should be considered in research and interventions with early adolescents to reduce sexual activity.”
According to an article in the Sunday Tasmanian, 26 March 2006, “A damning verdict has been delivered on the power of television in encouraging sexual behaviour among teenagers. Researchers found that 13-year-olds who watched programs with sexual themes were the most sexually active or the keenest to become so.”
“Media is more important than religious and school influences… This makes media the biggest single environmental factor influencing teenagers’ decisions on when to engage in sexual activity and how far they would go”, according to Dr L’Engle (emphasis ours).
The article continues by saying, “Dr L’Engle said TV was regarded by teenagers as a ‘super peer’ to provide information about sex. The majority of sexual content in the media depicts risk-free recreational sexual behaviour between non-married people. Viewers are more likely to adopt behaviour depicted by characters who are perceived as attractive and realistic and who are not punished but rewarded for their behaviour.”
As noted in the previous article, Gerbner found that the heaviest viewers of television are the most likely to give a “television answer” in response to questions about life events. Similarly, the heaviest consumers of pornography, when asked about their perceptions of sexuality and dispositions about sexual behaviour are the most likely to give a “pornography answer”. It has now been proven that adolescents find the answers to their sexual questions and form their important sexual decisions based on the media.
Our readers can Google “Kelly Laden L’Engle” and click on “news” for the few places where we have found this groundbreaking research paper to have been reported. Is the “media elite” blacklisting these findings?