Summary: 2hrs a Day of TV + No Parental Supervision = Increased Teen Sex

Watching television for two or more hours per day and a lack of parental regulation of television programming are each associated with an increased risk of initiating sexual intercourse among adolescents.

• The initiation of sexual intercourse by younger adolescents is associated with risky sexual behaviors and increases the risk of multiple sexual partners, unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and pelvic inflammatory disease. Several predictors of sexual intercourse during early adolescent years have been identified and include early puberty, poor self-esteem, depression, poor academic performance, being less religious, low parental education, lack of attentive and nurturing parents, and cultural and family patterns of early sexual experience. More recently, exposure to television has also been a proposed factor of early adolescent sexual intercourse.  In order to test this theory, the researchers in this study sampled 4,808 students younger than 16 years of age who had not initiated intercourse before the baseline interview and were followed up on a year later. At the beginning of the study, a reported 2,414 (48.8%) of the students watched television for two or more hours per day. After the one year follow-up, 791 (15.6%) of the students had initiated intercourse. Sexual initiation was associated with high television use and lack of parental regulation of television programming. Most of the students reported strong parental disapproval of sex and their overall rate of sexual initiation was 12.5% and their risk was independently associated with high television use and lack of parental regulation of television programming. The researchers of this study concluded that, among the young adolescents who reported strong parental disapproval of sex, watching television that was not regulated by their parents for two or more hours per day increased their chances to initiate sexual activity within one year.¹

¹Television Viewing and Risk of Sexual Initiation by Young Adolescents, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 160, April 2006, pp. 375-380.