According to the radio station I was just listening to, watching TV with sexual content makes it much more likely for teen girls to get pregnant! So, parents, you should probably regulate what your little girls watch more closely!
That's right, ladies and gentlemen! Your daughters will get pregant if they watch reruns of Sex in the City! Clearly they should be watching Barney, or something.
The sexual activity of your sons means nothing! You MUST PROTECT YOUR DAUGHTERS! OMG!.
It makes me ill. Seriously.
What the stuipd bint (and yes, thank you for your lovely demonstration of feminine misogyny) on 103.5 QMFM was, in fact referring to this study. Of course, news sources aren't clear on whether the study shows a causal or casual relationship between teen pregnancy and sexualized programming. After all, it seems fairly likely that teens inclined to sexual activity are more prone to watch sexually suggestive or explicit fare. So, is it the chicken or the egg? Do they watch sexually suggestive TV and decide that sex is teh_coolies, or do they think sex is teh_coolies and decide that shows that depict sex in a positive light are what they want to see.
Frankly, without reading the actual study, what it sounds to me like is that researchers -- shockingly -- found what they were looking for... a link between "sexy" TV and kids having sex, but the conclusion that it immediately implies "sexy" TV is causing them to have sex is incredibly insulting to both the kids and the shows themselves.
Most shows with significant sexual content are marketed to adults, not teens. It is not the job of the shows to educate kids in their sexuality, in the inherent pleasures and responsibilities in it -- that's on the parents.
More than that, it's an insult to the kids. The assumption that they're not responsible for their choices (OMG, TV made you do it! The TV is SATAN!), that they're not capable of beginning to take responsibility for what they do and what they choose to do or not do is an insult to teenagers. They aren't babies. While they're not fully adult, neither are they helpless lumps of clay.
I'm not saying that TV hasn't got an effect. I'm sure it does. But asking a bunch of kids if they got pregnant/got others pregnant and, btw, did you watch any of these TV shows regularly doesn't prove anything other than sexually active kids found ways to watch sexually suggestive or explicit TV. And if you're shocked that sexually active kids also enjoy the same mature content that adults do, you're a moron.
Gee, I wonder, if you did a survey of adults between the ages of 25 to 40, what's the correlation between "sexy" tv and pregnancy?