User:Illuminato/media

The media and American adolescent sexuality relates to the effect the media has on the sexuality of American adolescents, and the portrayal thereof.

According to Sexual Teens, Sexual Media: Investigating Media's Influence on Adolescent Sexuality, adolescence can be divided into three different stages; early (ages 8–13 years), middle(ages 13–16 for girls, 14-17 for boys) and late (16 and older for girls, 17 and older for boys). Each stage focuses on different aspects of cognitive, physical, social and psychological development. Although not all teens develop through adolescence at the same rate the stages usually follow a specific pattern. For a teen in the early stages of adolescence they are in the beginning stages of puberty. In this stage of adolescence, relationships begin to become important as well as their physical appearance. Middle adolescence is characaterized by independence from their family and increased activity with their peers. This is the stage where sexual activity may begin to occur. The last stage of adolescence the teenager begins to feel more secure in their bodies and their sexual behavior. With these aspects of adolescence in mind, media can play an important role in how teen shape their views about sexuality.

Researchers remain divided on the role of sexuality in the media on adolescent sexual health. The American Academy of Pediatrics has argued that media representations of sexuality may influence teen sexual behavior. However some scholars have argued that such claims have been premature. Despite increasing amounts of sexual media US Government statistic state that teens have delayed the onset of sexual intercourse in recent years. According to journalism professor and media critic Jane Brown, the media is piquing teen interest in sex at ages younger than previous. Dr. Brown argues that research has "found a direct relationship between the amount of sexual content children see and their level of sexual activity or their intentions to have sex in the future." However, the direction (and mechanism) of causality remains unclear.

Sexuality in the media
Some scholars argue that American media is the most sexually suggestive in the world. According to this view, the sexual messages contained in film, television, and music are becoming more explicit in dialog, lyrics, and behavior. In addition, these messages may contain unrealistic, inaccurate, and misleading information. Some scholars argue that still developing teens may be particularly vulnerable to media effects. A 2001 report found that teens rank the media second only to school sex education programs as a leading source of information about sex, but a 2004 report found that "the media far outranked parents or schools as the source of information about birth control."

Media often portray emotional side-effects of sexuality such as guilt, and disappointment, but less often physical risks such as pregnancy or STDs. One media analysis found that sex was usually between unmarried couples and examples of using condoms or other contraception were "extremely rare." Many of programs or films do not depict consequence for sexual behavior. For example, only 10% programs that contain sexual scenes include any warnings to the potential risks or responsibilities of having sex such as sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. In television programing aimed at teens, more than 90% of episodes had at least one sexual reference in it with an average of 7.9 references per hour.

However, government statistics suggest that since 1991, both teen sex and teen pregnancy have declined dramatically despite the media generally becoming increasingly sexually explicit.

Effects of the media on beliefs about sex
Some scholars feel that adolescents may turn to the media as a "sexual super peer" when seeking information about sexual norms and adult roles given the lack of information about sexuality readily available to them. For example, in one study of 13-and 14-year-olds, heavy exposure to sexually oriented television also increased acceptance of non-marital sex. Another study found that teens overestimate how many of their peers are sexually active, a problem contributed to by the media.

Another study found that middle-school-aged boys who watch music videos or pro-wrestling one day a week are 10% more likely to have a higher acceptance rate for rape than boys who do not watch any. Boys who watch music videos four days a week and pro wrestling 1.7 days a week (the mean exposure rate for boys) have 70% higher odds of endorsing a greater level of rape acceptance. "Both music videos and pro wrestling shows are popular with youth, combine violent and sexual content, and glorify individuals who behave violently."

Pregnancy
Some researchers have found a correlation between the amount of television with high sexual content that teenagers watch and an increased likelihood of them becoming pregnant or fathering a child out of wedlock. Some studies suggest teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV are twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20.

These researchers believe that reducing the amount of sexual content adolescents watch on television could substantially reduce the teen pregnancy rate. "It's a cumulative effect," Brown believes. "It's probably not any one portrayal that makes the difference, but it's a consistent, and now unhealthy, sexual script that adolescents do see as a depiction of appropriate behavior."

Several complementary studies have found that television viewing can influence multiple aspects of reproductive health among youths and that "earlier sexual initiation is associated with negative health outcomes." Previous research has suggested two ways that glamorized perception of sex may contribute to teen pregnancy: by encouraging teens to become sexually active early in their adolescence and by promoting inconsistent use of contraceptives.

Early sexual activity
Some studies have also found that adolescents whose media diet was rich in sexual content were more than twice as likely as others to have had sex by the time they were 16. In a Kaiser Family Foundation study, 76 percent of teens said that one reason young people have sex is because TV shows and movies make it seem normal for teens. In addition to higher likelihoods that an adolescent exposed to sexual content in the media will engage in sexual behaviors, they are also have higher levels of intending to have sex in the future and more positive expectations of sex.

Some studies suggest that children who watch adult content on television are more likely to have sex earlier once they reach adolescence. For every hour of adult-targeted television or movies watched by children when they were 6 to 8 years old, there was a 33% increased risk of becoming sexually active in early adolescence.

"Children have neither the life experience nor the brain development to fully differentiate between a reality they are moving toward and a fiction meant solely to entertain," explained David Bickham, a staff scientist in the Center on Media and Child Health. "Children learn from the media, and when they watch media with sexual references and innuendos, our research suggests they are more likely to engage in sexual activity earlier in life."

Other research has suggested that linking sexuality in media with adolescent sexual behavior is premature. Steinberg and Monahan reanalyzed a dataset of teen sexual behavior (Collins et al.) using propensity score matching and discovered that with other risk factors controlled, viewing sexual media did not predict early onset of sexual behavior in adolescents. The authors concluded that links between media viewing and adolescent sexuality are more tenuous than previous believed.

Researchers on both sides of the debate acknowledge that assigning causality to correlations between media use and sexual behavior are difficult, given the lack of experimental research, and difficulty controlling for all potential confounding variables.

One study found that the relationship between exposure to sexual contact in the media and increased sexual activity among adolescents is more pronounced in white youths than black youths. Black teens are more likely to be influenced by their friends' sexual experiences and their parents' expectations than by what they see in the media.

Pornography
Between the 3rd and 10th grades more than 90% of children will be exposed to pornography. Psychiatrist Jerald says access, affordability and anonymity has made online sexual activity "extraordinarily common" among all ages, including adolescents. Adolescents who intentionally seek out pornography, both online and off, are overwhelmingly male. Older youth are more likely than younger youth to seek porn.

media
The entertainment industry "is largely unconcerned with what real adolescents are doing. Movie and television producers opt to simulate youthful sexual expression and to glamorize emerging sexuality."

In the media "non-ideal" losses of virginity are often portrayed in more pleasant or happier ways than they typicall are in real life. Adolescents are less likely than adults to recognize that movie sex is unrealistic.

Only 3% of sex scenes on television involved apparent contraception use.

porn
When parents don't talk to their children about sex it is "at best foolish and potentially harmful to the the development of a healthy sexuality, and at worst maddeningly irresponsible as we enter an era of the Internet-as-sex-educator."

The media, and peers will fill in as sex educators if parents do not.

For millions of youth, internet porn is their introduction to both sexual information and expression.

A 2003 study found that 25% of youth were exposed to unwanted sexual content on the internet, and one in four of them were extremely upset by what they saw. "One wonders if the same would be true today, considering the numbness that tends to accompany heightened exposure."

Online porn is more accessable than the offline variety, and it has different effects. Male users tends to distract men from their real life sexual partners.

The strongest predictors of internet porn use are weak religious ties and the lack of a happy marriage.

Only 3% of girls claim to use internet pornography.

The more important religion is to a teen, the less likely they are to use pornography.

Most teenage boys look at porn, but don't admit to using it much. Many belive it is helpful for releaving pent up sexual tension and some feel guilty about using it. Most are embaressed to admit it. They also don't talk to their friends about it, and don't believe that it affects them.

Some boys use pornography as instructional tools about proper sexual technique, a thought that "most girls would certainly loathe."

Most internet pornography shows submissive women and aggressive men. The main themes of heterosexual pornography are that women always want sex from men, that women like all the sexual acts that men demand of them, and any woman who doesn't realize this at first can be persuaded with a little force. "As a result, some adolescent boys approach girls expecting them to be into anything and everything."

It is difficult to determine just how much "adolescent girls have actually internalized the unrealizstic (and emotionally harmful) norms of pornography," but the evidence suggests that they are.

POrn is "a central source of adolescents' information about the sexual practices of others. It's a poor source, no doubt, fraught with unreal accounts of hypersexuality, group sex, fetishes, and women who live only to sexually satisfy men.  it does not reflect sexual reality."

internet pornography "is certainly the primary--and, for some, the only--sexual education that teenagers now receive." Exposure to porn makes acts "presumed to be both normative and mutually pleasurable." Exposure is so widespread that even classroom sex-ed "pales in significance and gravity." Even if kids don't watch internet porn themselves, they will still probably hear about it and be influenced by their friends and peers who do.

One study has found that teens want to be taught about "the huge emotional gap between porn and reality."

Adolescents are being exposed to sex, including alternative sexualities, "more intensively at earlier ages than ever before." School based sex-ed is "rapidly being replaced as authoritative by uncensored and unchallenged sexual content on the Internet."