How Does Television Affect Teen Attitudes Regarding Sex?
We live in a sex-based society. Everything sells better through sex, whether we
refer to beer or shampoos. Daily hundreds of TV channels flood our lives with movies,
commercials or TV shows with sexual explicit content. The weatherman is a sexy woman
showing off her breasts in a tight top; the 10 o'clock Monday night movie has a
restricted content for 16 years old teenagers, mainly because of its' verbal and
visual references to sexual relationships.
It is known that teenagers are the most exposed social category of our time. Because
they are just beginning to form as individuals, they experience character and mood
changes daily, being more inclined to take any information or stimulus they receive
and "squeeze" it into their own personality, letting themselves be controlled by
what they see.
In front of the TV is often the place where they hang out the most. On an average,
kids from six to seventeen watch from three to four hours of TV a day. By the time
of graduation, it can add up to 15,000 hours of watching TV, compared to only
11,000 hours of being in school. Therefore, the influence of TV on teens
is substantial.
Teens experience daily explicit sex scenes
and crude language during prime time and
pornographic content of talk shows and soap operas. Numerous case studies have shown
that teenagers who watch soap operas daily tend to borrow the attitudes towards sex
and relationships they see there in their own private lives, they identify with the
characters they see and they act or think they are supposed to act like them. For
teenage boys it all becomes a matter of who gets the "prizes" (beautiful women),
and teenage girls think in terms of strategies on how to "get a good catch."
For them, sex becomes a competitive act, a sport. Sexual relationships
are shown as recreational, shallow, inconsequential, while equitable male-female relationships
are overshadowed by them.
Moreover, teens' attitudes toward reality are suffering massive transformations;
they have problems putting aside fiction from reality. Viewing involvement has a
strong connection to sexual attitudes
regardless of the teenagers' gender, race,
socioeconomic status. Teens who feel a great connection with the sexual situations
showed to them on TV, via identification with the characters or by attributing a
great amount of realism to them, are more likely to endorse recreational attitudes
toward sex. They are also more likely to expect higher levels of sexual activity
among their peers, and to be more sexually experienced themselves.
To sum up, television screams "sex is vital to relationships" and teens who strive
to reach the standards shown on TV and fail are likely to feel inadequate, although
the expectations are those that are distorted. TV's sexual portrayals tend to
educate teens about what is expected; the concern arises because these attractive
portrayals are unrealistic, may lead to dissatisfaction with one's sexual
experiences and to irresponsible sexual decision-making (underage sex).
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