Mass Media and the Early Onset of Sex among Youth

Now that our society is in the momentum of modernity, different innovations has been done to various types of media. As these media are continuously earning the fame most especially from youth, many researchers have also raised the increasingly bad effects of those media to adolescents.

            Media is the easiest, most accessible and the most comfortable ways to answer their questions and will quench their curiosity. As what several studies suggest, media has become the sex educators of the new generation as they portrayed sexually explicit materials and fed the adolescent’s mind with the sexually related information which is not accurate and unhealthy. And as a result, media became the catalyst for early sexual initiations.

“Sexual content in mass media has been around as long as mass media itself,” Arizona State professor Mary-Lou Galician, a researcher, author and media literacy advocate says.

The mass media are an increasingly accessible way for young people to learn about and see sexual behavior. Mass media refers to the channels of communication that is designed to reach the mass of the people. Psychologists suggests that the media provide role models whose behaviors are imitated by members of the audience. Rebecca Collins stated in her study that this imitation is a component of social learning of adolescents: "monkey see, monkey do".

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, teen sex is a “major public health problem”. The physical, emotional, and social consequences of teen sexual activity include higher rate of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS.

Many have argued that mass media are particularly important resources for sexual information because parents provide little information and schools tend to emphasize a biological approach with little attention to romance and interpersonal relationships. Researchers believed that there are many factors that might contribute to a relationship between media content and behavior like parent communication, sexual education and others.

Media consumption and message absorption by the youth will vary and will be modified by the aid of different factors such as the proper guidance provided by parents and the presence of grounds which will supply the right information about sex to the youth.

Taken together, it is strongly recommended for parental guidance and the visibility of sex education in an objective manner to lessen the exposure of the youth to sexually explicit material which drive them to try premarital sex. Parents should allot more time in keeping an eye on their child during accessing various types of media. They should limit the time given to their child in utilizing these media and they should not place the television, computers and the like in their child’s bedroom where they can privately use it.

Apparently, media can be our society’s friend but it can also be our enemy. What will it be? It depends upon us.