I'm including below the e-mailed result of a conversation about a New York Times article in today's paper.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I don't mean this to be construed as taking the issues in the article too lightly, and a lot of my jokes in my commentary sort of lend that impression - I intend it merely for mockery purposes. Sexuality in the media is something with real negative consequences, but my point is that this article so badly blows its perspective that it neturalizes the value of the study. It's a scare piece directed at parents, a real local-news level bit of buffonery. A very "I'm on your side, don't worry, we all want things to look like a 50s sitcom" head-in-the-sand kind of perspective.
Anyway, here's what I think about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
My objection here is basically about two things: One - there is an overwhelming focus on premarital sex = bad (as opposed to casual, random, or unsafe sex, each with their crescendoing degree of 'badness') and Two - the utter obviousness of the premise. Of course there's an influence from sexuality in the media. I mean, um, duh. Real hard-hitting study there.
Extra bonus objections include the graphic for it (licked lips = sex is funny enough, but popping out of a mouse is just awesome) and the idea that TV is going to be a great source of healthy lifestyles - it's not like we're shocked...shocked! that TV promotes unhealthy eating, for example.
Now, to wit:
In last summer's prize-winning R-rated film "Me and You and Everyone We Know," a barely pubescent boy is seduced into oral sex by two girls perhaps a year older, and his 6-year-old brother logs on to a pornographic chat room and solicits a grown woman with instant messages about "poop."
Is this what your teenage children are watching?
I haven't seen the movie, but scanning the reviews doesn't make me think that it glamorizes six year olds in porn chat rooms. It's about dysfunction and it's satire. So it's a bad start, in any case. It's like starting something with a description of the Titanic and using it as proof that children are being overexposed to Hubris.
Although a great deal is known about the effects of mass media on other adolescent behaviors, such as eating, smoking and drinking, we know basically nothing about the effects of mass media on adolescent sexual behaviors
We don't? I was under the impression that we were pretty clear on the media influence on teenagers' sexuality.
[A]dolescents are almost certainly affected -- negatively -- by sexual references and images from television, in movies and video games, in music, in magazines and on Web sites.
Here's the thing - I actually agree with this. It's back to the commodification of it discussion we had earlier. The problem is that this is a sweeping overgeneralization - the article ignores the possibility of positive influences, pretty much at all. I can't speak to TV, but there's plenty of sex-positive concepts in movies, music, magazines and Web sites. Nerve.com; the Stranger (not the Camus); Savage Love; Rent; I mean, really, come on.
The effect of abstinence-only education pales by comparison with the many graphic messages that portray sexual activity -- especially unprotected sex outside of marriage -- to be a part of our culture as normal and acceptable as eating a Big Mac or drinking a Coke.
Then maybe the problem is with the abstinence only education, huh slick? This is the only mention of sex ed in the article, and OF COURSE abstinence only isn't going to work. I mean, duh. It doesn't work ever. A realistic sex ed could probably help out a lot. Also, sexual activity IS a part of our culture . And every other one. Ever. You know, that's how we keep making more cultures. and dropping 'unprotected' and 'marriage' in the same aside is disingenuous. Unprotected sex IS bad, sex outside of marriage is only a bugaboo if you're a Christian [sic] Conservative. Needless to say, sexual activity is in EVERY way healthier than eating a Big Mac or drinking a Coke. Note the brand names here. Consuming unhealthy products manufactured by multinational corporations? Go for it, kids! But sex? nonononono. It'll kill you.
The rates of sexually transmitted diseases are higher among teenagers than among adults, and 35 percent of girls have been pregnant at least once by age 20.
If this is true, and we assume that adult women are having as much sex (or more) than teenagers, then the problem isn't the sex, is it? It's probably something the kids don't know.
"Data suggest that sexually active adolescents are at high risk for depression and suicide," the report states. "Early sexual experience among adolescents has also been associated with other potentially health-endangering behaviors, such as alcohol, marijuana, and other drug use."
Never mind the heinous use of the word 'data' as plural. This is probably just not true, or else a quirk in the data due to scientists looking for what they want. It's SEX=DRUGS=SUICIDE again, which is patently false, and if anything due to our society's intensive hatred of its bodies.
Oh, and did I mention this before? The report...was requested by Congress. Oh yeah, those guys don't have an agenda.
The average teenager watches it [TV] for more than three hours a day. Two-thirds of youngsters 8 to 18 have TV's in their bedrooms, and two-thirds live in homes with cable TV
Maybe things are different for this mysterious group of people. Considering that the only time I'd see more than three hours of TV was during a football game, perhaps I'm a bad judge of its actual impact.
The foundation study found that "characters involved in sexual behavior in TV programs rarely experience any negative consequences."
That's because sexual behavior rarely has negative consequences. Seriously. Usually, it's healthy. There are real dangers of unhealthy sexual behavior, but they're exceptions. Also, I'm suspicious of the "Kaiser Family Foundation" anyway.
permissive attitudes toward premarital sex.
mostly sex among unmarried partners.
Premarital sex, as a defined term, means a political agenda as far as I'm concerned. That's why I'm suspicious of the whole article.
My main point is that this seems to be a scare piece, rather than intelligent reporting. "Can TV turn your child into a sex maniac? What it means, for your weekend , coming up at 11" It takes something everyone knows (There's sex in the media) puts out some numbers that everyone agrees are bad (Chylmidia and teen pregnancy) and then stops. It simply beats up on two straw men, promiscious teenagers and the big scary Media, without addressing the real concern. Teen sexuality isn't a result of TV and the internet, it's always been there. What we need to accomplish is finding a way to make it healthy and positive, mitigating the dangers involved. But the problem here is that the institutions that are generally supposed to provide a positive influence, and an educational influence are so steeped in bullshit that they have become irrelevant.