A Little More Sex Than You Might Expect
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 – A recent study reveals that sexual content on television is more widespread than ever and may be influencing teenagers’ sexual behavior.
The study, conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, was released Wednesday at a news conference with a panel of TV executives, federal regulators and health experts.
Examining a week’s worth of programming from such outlets as ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA and HBO, the study found that 70 percent of all shows include some sexual content – ranging from talk about sex to implied intercourse. The study also revealed that these shows average five such incidents of sexual content per hour.
“You might be wondering why in this digital era we are so concerned about something as, maybe, old-fashioned as television,” said Vicky Rideout, Kaiser Family Foundation vice president. “The reason is that young people in our society spend more time watching television, by far, than they do with any other medium.”
Studies show that adolescents watch television for an average of about three hours a day, a figure that concerns many parents and some legislators.
“When children are exposed to sex without consequences, they’re more likely to have sex with consequences,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, a father of two young girls. “We don’t teach our children that healthy relationships involve drunken, naked parties in a hot tub with strangers, but that’s what they see when they turn on [MTV’s] ‘The Real World.’ ”
The Kaiser Foundation study also revealed that 14 percent of programs with at least one sexual reference include a reference to sexual risks or responsibilities, a growing trend in television programming.
“The shows that include at least a passing reference to such issues, while still relatively low, has increased significantly over the last seven years,” Ms. Rideout said.
In recent years, television networks have accepted a fraction of the monitoring responsibility by adopting the TV rating system, promoting the V-Chip and running public service announcements to educate parents during prime-time television.
Ultimately, however, many network executives feel that broadcast television is not the sole influence on teenagers’ lives and that it is the parents’ responsibility to monitor their children.
“To isolate broadcast television as a cause of all this evil in the world is just wrong,” said Tony Vinciquerra, president and CEO of Fox Networks Group. “If you take television out of the equation, other influences are still going to be there.”
He added: “Parents do have the ability to lock out channels now on just about any cable system, and they can control what their families are able to watch.”
The news conference participants also discussed a separate study of 12- to 17-year-olds conducted in 2004 by RAND that found increased exposure to sexual content on television accelerates the initiation of sexual activities, including intercourse.
“Relative to other factors, [watching sexual content] was as large or larger than any other of the factors we looked at,” said Rebecca Collins, a behavioral scientist for RAND who conducted the study with her colleagues.
Collins said the only two factors, other than television content, correlating with a higher prevalence of sexual activity in adolescents were found among teens who lived in single-parent households or who described their friends as being mostly older than themselves.
The top 20 programs most viewed by teens, according to the Kaiser study, include a wide range of shows, such as “American Idol,” “The Simpsons,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Family Guy,” “The O.C.”, “Survivor,” “Lost,” “7 th Heaven” and “America’s Next Top Model.”
