Racy TV Responsible for Teenage Pregnancy?

When the HBO show “Sex and the City” came out, women across the nation rejoiced at the fresh, sexy and extremely honest dialogue in the show. Across college campuses, “Sex and the City” parties were held in female dorm rooms and bars across the nation started serving the famed Cosmopolitan martinis at an alarming rate. Even modern mothers and their teenage daughters would cozy up on the couch to watch the show together, often opening up dialogues to sexual topics not previously discussed. However, some researchers have begun suggesting that teenagers that watch television shows with sexual themes and dialogue are more likely to get pregnant than those teenagers who refrain from watching such shows.

In fact, those teens who regularly watched sexual-oriented shows like “Sex and the City” were two times more likely to get pregnant within the following three years than their tamer counterparts. This is the first time a link has been established between television watching and teen pregnancy, according to Anita Chandra, the lead researcher in the study. Chandra and her colleagues argue that shows that put sex in a positive light without regard or reference to risks involved can cause some teens to choose to have unprotected sex “before they’re ready to make responsible and informed decisions.”

Chandra’s study was highlighted in the Pediatrics journal in November 2008. The study had over 2,000 participants, both female and male, between the ages of twelve to seventeen. Using a phone interview, the teens were asked to answer honestly about the television shows they watched. Each teen was interviewed two times, one time in 2001 and again in 2004. Based on the results of the follow-up interview, Chandra and her colleagues gathered that of those interviewed, 58 girls admitted to having gotten pregnant and 33 boys admitted to getting a girl pregnant within those time frames. The study highlighted twenty different television shows that included mature/sexual themes, including “Friends,” “Sex and the City” and “That 70s Show.” Of the teenagers who regularly viewed these shows, pregnancies were two times more likely than those teenagers who did not view them.

Chandra and her colleagues did study various factors including the education level of the teenager’s parents and the success of the teenager in his/her academic studies. Despite the various factors, Chandra states that the choice of television shows watched did play a large part in pregnancy. Critics of the study like Elizabeth Schroeder, a director of a sex education program for teenagers, feel that the study should also have researched several other factors including family income, values and the teenager’s self-esteem. States Schroeder, “The media does have an impact, but we don’t know the full extent of it because there are so many other factors.” On the other hand, those who support the study like Bill Albert, CPO of a program that helps to educate and prevent teenage pregnancy, feel that it “catches up with common sense. Media helps shape the social script for teenagers. Most parents know that. This is just good research to confirm that.” Albert does acknowledge that television shows, on their own, do not comprise the only influences on a teenager to agree to unprotected sex. Some psychologists like David Walsh feel that many teenagers have a difficult time speaking with their own parents about sex and, since many high schools have stopped offering sex education, television shows are a big important source for teenagers to learn about sex. “For a kid who no one’s talking to about sex, and then he watches sitcoms on TV where sex is presented as this is what the cool people do,” it makes sense that teenagers often get pregnant, suggests Walsh. He supports parents discussing sexual topics with their children before influences like television come into play; he also feels that parents should monitor their teenager’s television watching.