When I was a teenager, the biggest fight I had with my mother was over the media I enjoyed. She disapproved of my Stephen King novels, heavy metal cassettes, and choice of movie and television watching. I wasn't allowed to see a movie with a higher than PG rating, and was disallowed from ever entering a friend's house again after seeing a film that contained a half-second of nudity. My mother's argument was that my choice of media would turn me into a bad human being. That view depends on the idea that media causes behavior, and that human choice is so limited as to be practically irrelevant. Apparently she is not alone in that belief.
The Rand Corporation recently released a study claiming that watching television with a high degree of sexual content leads to more and earlier sexual activity amongst adolescents. Studies like this always catch my attention because of my experience with my mother. I didn't believe it when she said it, explaining that demons that live in the music would go into my brain and take over my soul. But this study is "scientific," and I'm a proponent of science, so it deserves more attention.
The first thing that needs to be said is that this information, if true, is presented like it's a huge terrible thing. Hello? Teen-agers have been having sex... FOREVER! As to the lack of negative consequences portrayed on television--it's not the job of TV to educate people; that's the job of SCHOOLS or PARENTS! Further, the contra-dictory standards we hold in this country about sex are abominable. We combine sexual liberation (in both it's legitimate non-guilty form, and it's illegitimate free-love form) with sexual repression. As adults we watch "Sex in the City," and spend a lot of time and money thinking about and pursuing sex. But we tell teen-agers: "Sex is bad, m'kay? Don't have sex, m'kay?"
In the past I have estimated that over half the people I went to high-school with had had sex by the time they were 16 years old. The Rand corporation puts that figure closer to 46%. 15-16 seems to be the time when most people have sex. Maybe someone should do a study of people of all age groups asking when was the first time they had sex--and maybe that study should span countries around the world. I wonder if the answer would be any different. I hypothesize that it would not. The only such study a quick googling was able to find put the average age for first-time sex at 14.8 in California.
A Digression:
My great-great grandmother, Lizzie, was 15 when she got married. She came home (to her mother's) on her wedding night livid, but she would not talk about what had happened. It took 3 days for her mother to pry out of her what had happened. She finally exclaimed "He got fresh with me!"
On the surface, this story is funny. But it also shows the extent to which people were unwilling to discuss sex in my great-great-grandmother's day. She was 16 when my great-grandmother was born. My great-Grandmother was 17 when my grandmother was born. My grandmother was 17 when her first child was born. My mother was 16 when her first child (me) was born. Granted, this is not a scientific study--but it is a series of personal anecdotes spanning 5 generations that at least makes the question of "when do most people have sex" viable.
Making the digression relevant:
Don't we have to know what the normal age is for first-time-sex before we can start positing reasons that adolescents have sex earlier? Isn't the assumption that teens are having sex earlier based on some concept of what is normal?
The Study:
The study was conducted with two waves of phone interviews of 1792 adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age. The phone interviews were conducted a year apart. The interviews sought information from the teens on TV viewing habits, and sexual activity. They found that students that watched higher rates of sexual activity on tv, had more sex more often.
No shit, sherlock.
My first thought upon hearing this was that people who are more interested in having sex will seek out and watch more sex on television. The Rand Corporation responds to that argument thusly: "Relationships between viewing sexual content and advancing sexual behavior were not attributable to the effects of developing sexual behavior on selective viewing of sexual content. Our analyses controlled for adolescents’ level of sexual activity at baseline, rendering an explanation of reverse causality for our findings implausible."
But later they say: "A limitation of this research was our inability to control for adolescent interest in sex or sexual readiness before TV viewing. Youths who are considering coital or noncoital activities that they have not yet enacted may watch more sex on TV (eg, to get information or to satisfy desires). They may subsequently engage in these sexual activities sooner but as a result of their higher levels of interest, not as a result of their TV exposure. It was not possible for us to test for this alternative interpretation of our results with only 2 waves of data. "
I'm no statistician, and I'll admit that there's a lot in this study that I just flat don't understand, but I think the above is pretty damn clear.
Conclusions:
Look people, it's really simple. Teen-agers have sex. Maybe you don't like to think about little-Johnny or Susie in the back seat of a car, but it happens. Instead 0f blaming television, music, books, or whatnot--put the blame where it belongs: on biology and personal choice; or if you're religious--blame GOD since he made you the way you are (joking, there is no god). This study by Rand is just another "demons in your brain" explanation of human behavior. Human beings have the faculty of choice, and do not have to accept by osmosis everything they're exposed to on television. Each person is responsible for their own ideas and their own actions.
Sex isn't bad. Let's drop the puritanical sexual morality most of us have subconsciously adopted and spend more time teaching teen-agers how to have sex in a responsible manner instead of trying to hide it from them. This means sex-education that does mention prophylactics, whether it's in a classroom or at home. Follow-up: in light of the fact that most people (at least in California) are having sex at 14.8, aren't age-of-consent laws lower than 15 just plain stupid?
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