Media's Nasty Impact on Youth
Themes of Sex and Violence Take Their Toll
CHICAGO, AUG. 19, 2006

(Zenit.org).- Recent studies confirm long-standing concerns about how the media influence children and adolescents. The Aug. 2 issue of the journal Pediatrics, published by the Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics, contained two articles on the topic.

One of them, entitled "Exposure to Degrading Versus Nondegrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior Among Youth," was based on telephone interviews with 1,461 teens aged 12 to 17. The group was interviewed three times: in 2001, 2002 and 2004. The average youth, according to the article, listens to music 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day, not counting music videos. Sexual themes are common in much of this music and range from romantic and playful to degrading and hostile.

The authors started by observing that there is strong theoretical justification for the notion that listening to sexual lyrics may influence adolescents' sexual behavior. Their study confirmed the theory, finding that "Teens who spent more time listening to music were more likely than those who spent less to initiate intercourse."

The article did point out that the correlation between the two factors is not definitive proof of a causal relationship. Nevertheless, the results showed that the more teens listened to degrading sexual music content, the more likely they were to subsequently initiate intercourse. By contrast, exposure to non-degrading sexual music did not lead to changes in sexual behavior.

"Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content could help delay the onset of sexual behavior," concluded the article. the rest