This may be old news, but I’ve wanted to comment for a while.
A recent Carolina-led study recently concluded that:
Teenagers between the ages of 12 and 14 who use media with high sexual content are up to 2.2 times more likely to have sex by the time they are 16 than those who use less such media.
So, basically, this study surveyed kids when they were 12-14 to see if they watched a lot of MTV and other debaucherous entertainment. Then they came back several years later and surveyed those kids again about their sexual lives.
They also found that:
Brown and her colleagues found that one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex. White teens who reported that their parents did not approve of them having sex at this age were less likely to have engaged in precoital sexual behavior. Both black and white youth who reported their parents did not want them to have sex were less likely to have engaged in sexual intercourse by the time they were 16 years old than those who perceived less parent disapproval of teen sex.
Isn’t it funny that we need to pay PhD’s to confirm beliefs that were just considered common sense fifty years ago. If one comes in contact with sexual content more, they will be more disposed to partake. In other words, as your mother told you when you were young, “don’t fill your head with garbage.” Secondly, parents can actually have a positive effect on their children.
These are just stunning revelations. My whole life I thought conservative’s desire for parental control in their children’s life and their distain for M-TV and such filth was simply traditionalistic backwardness spawned by men’s effort to preserve the oppressive patriarchy of a bygone era. I guess I was wrong.
Did the study find a cause or a correlation? Someone naturally predisposed to being sexually active at a young age would reasonably be expected to be naturally predisposed to liking to watch sex in the media–an that’s a correlation which is different from a causation.I don’t know that you can make the leap of logic that seeing something on tv led to sexual permiscuity. It might be true, but it also might not. It’s like the “magic bullet” theory of the media, that anything we say translates directly into an immediate shift in opinion or behavior. That’s simply not so. What the media says can result in shifting attitudes, perhaps, but I can remember watching sex and stuff on tv when i was young and I’m not sexually permiscuous.If sex on tv were causing people to have more sex at an earlier age, then that causation would be represented by EVERYONE who was exposed to the sexual media showing an earlier tendency to have sex. Because I don’t think this is the case (I haven’t seen the specifics of the survey results), I’d have to believe that there’s a correlation but that bad things on tv don’t make bad people out of us 100 percent of the time. (If it did, God save us all).
So what you’re saying is, we need more MTV?
David, I think you are right in that it seems to show a correlation rather than causality. That’s a good criticism of the study. Also, I didn’t claim “that bad things on tv make bad people out of us 100 percent of the time.” I don’t even think it does 10 percent of the time. I just think that it seems like common sense that negative reinforcement is negative. Whether or not one was predisposed to be promiscuous, watching a lot of crap will not help one abstain.
One more thing. You said that “If sex on tv were causing people to have more sex at an earlier age, then that causation would be represented by EVERYONE who was exposed to the sexual media showing an earlier tendency to have sex.” I don’t think that is the case. I didn’t do the study, but I think it is possible that media is one of several negative influences that lead to promiscuity. Maybe a very small influence. It is probable that promiscuity has to do most with a parent’s view on the matter. If a child sees their parent partaking in sex, they will be more likely to do so than a child who has two happily married parents who go to church every week and tell them that fornication is wrong. These factors are much stronger than television. However, it is possible that among single parent children whose parent is promiscuous, television adds another negative influence.
Perversion corrupts, it is that simple. Television has such an exponential corrupting effect, because no other medium in the history of the world has so successfully normalized and mainstreamed perversion. We didn’t need a study to inform us of televisions negative influence. The world would be a much better place without it.
Jeff: No, I’m just saying that I watched MTV and I don’t see any tangible “negative” influence. I like watching MTV sometimes, but most of the time I find their shows to be stupid and base. But like the People vs. Larry Flint, I like living in an America where I get to choose what I watch. If you try to show that certain programming has a “danger” element (which is an opinion, I’d say) then you can start to have an argument for regulating content on television on looser grounds than what it already is. And that I am totally against.Brian, I’ll agree that it probably has an influence. And the children-watching-MTV scenario is an X factor, because I definitely agree that children are more susceptible to messages than other groups of people. But I’d argue for parental controls of televions ala the V-chip than a banning of television shows. The dangers aren’t intrinsic to sexual programming, the dangers are when children who lack the ability to discern for themselves (because their values and identities are still being shaped) are exposed to such programming.
We didn’t need a study to inform us of televisions negative influence. The world would be a much better place without it.What a tool. Without TV, we’d have a much less educated populace. Sesame Street, Discovery Channel, etc., have contributed so much to our society.no other medium in the history of the world has so successfully normalized and mainstreamed perversionActually, the Internet has surpassed it. So I suppose you’d like to ban this medium you’re using right now?
dustin ingalls said What a tool. Without TV, we’d have a much less educated populace. Sesame Street, Discovery Channel, etc., have contributed so much to our society.Without television we’d have a more educated society. We’d be less homogenized, less entertained, less complacent with our time. As for kids specifically, they learn far more by interacting with others, whether the others are adults or also children.Also, the internet is fundamentally different from television in that the user is active. It’s more like the telephone system (which has also had far greater impact on society than television).