'Rachel and Ross made me have sex'

The Daily Mail has pounced on a survey from an American research body which says teenagers who watch programmes with a high sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant.

The programmes specifically cited in the study of 2,000 American youngsters are Sex and the City and Friends; perhaps also proving that a story is much more likely to catch the eye if it carries a picture of a hit TV programme and the star is a sexily dressed actress. Sarah Jessica Parker in her candy-striped outfit anyone?

The shows they refer to are very different beasts for a kick off. Sex and the City does portray sex, sometimes very graphically, and features frequent and frank discussion of the subject. But the show was always on after the watershed and the DVDs are classified for the over-15s. At the age of 16, British teenagers are legally allowed to have sex, so they need to have broached the subject before then.

And for all the graphic descriptions, Sex and the City's plotlines don't suggest that all casual sex is consequence-free. Miranda's one-night stand with Steve leads to her unexpected pregnancy. By the same token, Ross and Rachel's "bonus night" in the much tamer Friends leads to Rachel's unplanned baby. Two shows reflecting the fact that "people have sex" can hardly be held responsible for the sexualisation of teenagers.

But that's beside the point. The fact is, children who watch whatever TV they want, unsupervised, are also less likely to receive guidance from their parents in other areas of their life - ie sex education. If you're not going to take an interest in what your children are watching, will you bother to sit them down and tell them - before they become sexually active - about the choices they face as they reach the age of sexual maturity?

As usual, this news story is designed to terrify parents and provoke mass television burnings just in time for bonfire night. It's TV's fault. It couldn't possibly be the British embarrassment about sex that has landed us at the top of Europe's teen pregnancy chart. It couldn't be a lack of coherent sex education in schools or some parents failing to take responsibility for their children's emotional wellbeing. Or a combination of both.

The study is American, but a Tory MP is already calling for the research to be done here. The US survey of 12-17 year olds took no notice of social or economic factors. It didn't take into account the kind of sex education (if any) the teenagers were getting from their parents. It just drew the glib conclusion that regular exposure to sexualised television content (and they even include cartoons here) doubles a teenager's chances of pregnancy.

The influences on teenagers are many. Surely it is far more important to arm them with information about sexual activity than it is to cry scandal when they catch a glimpse of some heavy petting on a comedy show. Far from "the media" forcing them to grow up too early, it sounds like we could all do with being a bit more grown up when it comes to educating our own children.

Source: guardian.co.uk