Sexy media a siren call to promiscuity?

SEXY MEDIA A SIREN CALL TO PROMISCUITY?
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Michael Conlon]
Sexually charged music, magazines, TV and movies push youngsters into intercourse at an earlier age, perhaps by acting as kind of virtual peer that tells them everyone else is doing it, a study said Monday. "This is the first time we've shown that the more kids are exposed to sex in media the earlier they have sex," said Jane Brown of the University of North Carolina, chief author of the report. Previous research had been limited to television, said the study which looked at 1,017 adolescents when they were aged 12 to 14 and again two years later. They were checked on their exposure during the two years to 264 items -- movies, TV shows, music and magazines -- which were analyzed for their sexual content. In general it found that the highest exposure levels led to more sexual activity, with white teens in the group 2.2 times more likely to have had intercourse at ages 14 to 16 than similar youngsters who had the least exposure. The effect was not as pronounced for blacks, the study said, perhaps because the black youngsters in the study were already more sexually experienced than the whites were when the research began and thus were less influenced by media exposure over the two-year period. The study was published in the April issue of "Pediatrics," the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A portion of the data was previously published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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