Television: A Cause of Teen Pregnancy?

Gossip Girl, 90210 and One Tree Hill are only few among today’s popular television shows on prime time television that have influenced teens across America with infectious messages of glamorous drugs, binge drinking and unprotected sex in almost every episode telling teens that its ok to be promiscuous.

Teenagers who watch a lot of television programs that are rich in sexual content are twice as likely to become pregnant according to a November 2008 study by the journal Pediatrics. The journal Pediatrics was reportedly the first study to come out with a real correlation between television and teen pregnancy.

From 2001 to 2004, about 2,000 adolescents from age 12 to 17 were surveyed across the nation by the RAND Corporation, nonprofit research cooperation about their television habits and their sex lives. The survey focused on 23 television programs popular among teenagers such as dramas, comedies, reality programs and animated shows having sexual content such as discussion or depiction. After three years, the teens were surveyed once again and 700 out of the 2,000 admitted to engaging in sexual intercourse by the third survey. According to the study, about 1 million adolescents become pregnant each year in the United States.

The study found that the 90^th percentile of teens was the ones who watch the most television on a daily basis and were twice as likely to have unprotected sex and become pregnant. The teens who watched the least amount of television, the 10^th percentile, were half as less likely to engage in sexual behavior at all let alone unprotected sex. The study also found that teenagers living in a proper parenting home with structured lives and rules had a lower chance of becoming pregnant as a teen.

Teens are being brainwashed by media that sex is ok at any age really, at least that is what Serena and Blair are telling young girls who watch Gossip Girl every Monday night after they finish their homework.