This morning, the Washington Post reported a recent study suggesting that "Sexually Charged TV Might Raise Risk of Teen Pregnancy." Now, you and I both know that TV is not responsible for people's bad decisions. Clearly, teens repeatedly exposing themselves to sitcom sex does not make them repeatedly expose themselves in the backseats of cars or at band camp.
However, duh. I'm certain that my having watched Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Top Gun, Risky Business, Friends, and all manner of lousy movies with boobs in them definitely affected my decisions and desires. And now, I can't even watched Saved by the Bell or Full House - it's all tainted.
An interesting note about the article: the writer claims that the CDC says that 1 in 3 girls will get pregnant by age 20. I find that incredibly hard to believe. So I looked it up: the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics article on Teen Pregnancy says that there are 40.5 live births per 1000 women between age 15 and 19. That's slightly more than 4%. Even over the 5 years given, that's still only 20%, which means that there would have to be another 26 abortions per 1000 girls 15-19 PER YEAR.
I suppose that's not terribly unlikely, and perhaps I'm simply insulated by the posh school district I teach in where I can think of only a handful of pregnancies at my 1500+ student school in the last 9 years I've taught here.
Interesting.
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3 comments:
Sarah was reading this article this morning and basically said, "yeah, no crap." Pretty much sums up what I have to say.
I too read this article and said to myself, "self, no crap!" Obviously poor TV choices lead to a greater developement of poor life choices as acceptable - Good thing I spent my formative years watching Magyver!
I watched a lot of Looney Tunes growing up...and sure enough, I'm strangely attracted to cross-dressing rabbits.
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