Sex In Mass Media

Samantha Allen

Chandler Crawford

Ese Evbuomwan-Owa

Lindsey Markle

Sex in Mass Media and its Sociological Effects on Teenagers

The average teenager watches television for about 23 hours a week. While watching television, he or she is exposed to many sexual innuendos in the shows that he or she watches. As parents and facilitators are trying to fight against sexual activity at a young age, everything they say is being contradicted by the programming the American youth is watching on a daily basis. How is the message of abstinence ever going to out way the message that sex is an acceptable activity for the younger generations? This is not something new to television for adolescents, but it is something that is getting progressively worse and more acceptable to the general public. Alarmingly, the reality shows that are on television today are infused with unsuitable sexual connotations. Even the commercials use sex as a way to sell their products, even for the simplest of items such as a soft drink. The most unsettling thing about the commercials is that they use sex to advertise for miscellaneous items, but people do not take advantage of them to try to educate the youth about abstinence or to explain contraception measures and protective measures.

Today's youth is spending more time in front of the television in one week than they spend in school. Out of all of the homes in America 98% (Nielsen Media Research, 1998) of them have a television set available for family use. L Goodstein and M. Connelly say that 66% of the children in these households have a television in their bedrooms. Amongst these children most of them watch about a half an hour more television a day than the children without. This is allowing them to watch more television and be exposed to materials children should not encounter. The American academy of pediatrics recommends no more than two hours per day of media exposure. They suggest the best way to lessen their media exposure is to watch television with your children and monitor what they watch. You always hear about how violence in the media has an affect on the children but what about the sexual activity and sexual innuendoes on the shows they are watching? Almost 20 years ago the average numbers of sexual acts on television per hour were 2.3 and ten years ago the average was 8.5 sexual acts per hour, which is an increase of over 200%(Children Now and the Kaiser Family Foundation)! In scenes between unmarried partners less than 9% come to the conclusion that having sex for any reason is inappropriate (Children Now and the Kaiser Family Foundation). More that half of the characters encourages premarital sexual relations. One out of every five scenes with premarital sex involves teenagers. 42% of the characters condone sex while only 25% criticized it (Advocates for Youth).

Today, reality TV is the big thing and there is just as much sexual activity in reality shows as regular televisions shows. The correlation of these show portray the lives of real people. If teens see real people have sexual relationships on these reality shows they do not see them as characters anymore. These are real people with real lives and this is how they live, so it must be alright to act this way. One of the worst of these reality TV shows is the "dating shows". One example of this is the Elimidate show, one girl or one guy will meet up with 4 people of the opposite sex. Couples hook up for one night and if all goes right the show ends up in a hot tub that in a lot of times will then lead to spending the night together. One then goes through a series of rounds to eliminate one person each round. The purpose of this show is to find someone they can "hook-up" with for the night. These shows are not meant to try to find the love of your life, just to find someone to have fun with for the night. By showing real people looking for someone that they just want to sleep with at the end of the night and never talk to again is sending the wrong message to teens. It says that it is okay just to try to find someone for the night to fill your sexual urges. Even the most popular shows like Survivor or The Real World will take time in the show to show the night scenes between couples. Even if there is nothing going on between the two people they want to make you think that maybe something is going on. This is how they try to keep people interested; sex sells so they will use this to promote what is going on in the show.

Commercials are also a big contribution to the unnecessary sexual implications that adolescents watch besides in the television shows. By the time a person is eighteen years of age they have already watched three hundred and fifty thousand commercials (Advocates for Youth). Most commercials have several sexual innuendoes in them to bring interest to male audiences. The ironic part of the whole scenario is that only 40% of men will not ever pause for a commercial, they will flip through the channels and channel surf instead (Christenson and Roberts 123). For example, the phone sex operator lines that are on local basic television channels after 11:00 p.m. during various basic television programs. What kind of message are the children getting from this? Compared to all of the commercials that use sex to sell products there are very few commercials that will try to promote safe sex. Condom commercials are televised but not very often and they do not explain why you need to take advantage of this product. Teens should know that the risk of pregnancy and STD's are lessened but not impossible with the use of condoms. Networks will very rarely show contraceptives because they believe they would upset the moral views and taste of their viewers. Why not show the ways to protect yourself from the dangers on sex when networks are showing the activity in theirs shows? Why don't channels have public service announcements that promote abstinence? They have them to fight against drug use, drinking, and smoking; where are they to help you talk to you children about no having sex until they are old enough to know what it is about and to save yourself for someone you care about.

Television has a strong influence on the way teens view sex. Sources show that 3 out of 4 teenagers believe that seeing sex on television and seeing the portrayal that it is okay is a reason they decide to have sex (The Alan Guttmacher Institute). Teens say they learn a lot about sex from what they watch on television.