For those who have had enough election coverage, here’s the alternate story of the day: “Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy, Says Report” (Time, 11/3/08). “Teen Pregnancies Tied to Viewing Sexy TV Shows” (AP, 11/3/08). “Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies” (Washington Post, 11/3/08).
Stories like these are catnip for the news media, which loves a chance to moralize about entertainment media’s obsession with teenage sex while indulging its own prurient fascination with the subject. The trouble is that the study the story is based on is pretty obviously bogus.
The study, published in Pediatrics (11/5/08), found that teenage girls who get pregnant watch sexier TV shows than their non-pregnant counterparts. The interesting question, though, is whether watching sexy TV makes you more likely to get pregnant—and that seems unlikely, despite the tendency of journalists writing up the study to assume that correlation proves causality. (Time‘s Alice Park fell particularly hard for this fallacy, writing that the study’s findings “may explain in part why the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is double that of other industrialized nations.”)
The study’s lead researcher, Anita Chandra, is quoted in the Washington Post story: “Sexual content on television has doubled in the last few years, especially during the period of our research”—the study period being 2001–04. So what was happening to teen pregnancy rates while sex on TV doubled?
Well, they dropped every year—the birthrate for teens 15–17 was 27.4 in 2000, 25.2 in 2001, 23.2 in 2002, 22.4 in 2003, 22.1 in 2004 and 21.4 in 2005. If that’s what happens when you double the sex on TV, then it’s very unlikely that sex on TV has much influence on teen pregnancy rates. Or, if you work from the assumption that correlation means causality, then sexy TV might be a very effective form of birth control.
Well, Jim … I think you’re being a bit absolutist here.
While many factors are involved, I don’t think you can discount any connection between what someone sees in the media and how she or he behaves.
Isn’t that what advertising’s based on?
To me, this isn’t about being anti-sex, but about how you deal with it responsibly. I don’t think anyone can make a case that sexual behavior’s being presented in a mature and intelligent fashion in US media, can they?
And, of course, the irony in all this is that the same outlets that love to moralize on this issue promote the hell out of these same shows.
Who says you can’t have it all?
This type of study is misleading. They take a sample of teens who are involved in a sedentary and mindless activity and then compare it with teens as a whole, which includes those involved in school activities such as sports, music, and drama, as well as those who are busy with jobs. It would be better if if they took a sample of kids who all watch a similar amount of television and then look at the pregnancy rates of those who watch sexy shows vs. those who watch other types of programming, but it still would not prove a causation.