Sex Screen: The Dilemma of Media Exposure and Sexual Behavior

Abstract

Worries about the influences that media may have on young people’s sexual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors range back to the early days of motion pictures. The nickelodeon allowed anyone with 5¢ to view images that they might not see in the course of their everyday experience, short films of burlesque strippers, bare-breasted natives of the South Pacific or Africa, and even a remarkably salacious Kiss made by Thomas Edison, the staid inventor of motion picture technology. The medical community began voicing its concern about the effects that entertainment media may have on sexual activity nearly 3 decades ago. After the 1972 Surgeon General’s report Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence 1 and a watershed 1975 review article on media violence in the Journal of the American Medical Association ,2 the American Medical Association House of Delegates passed 2 media-related resolutions, one calling media violence “an environmental risk factor threatening the health and welfare of young Americans, indeed our future society”3 and another stating their opposition to “television programming that is sexually suggestive or pornographic.”4 The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), now the recognized leader among medical organizations on the issue of media effects on health, took another approach to the subject of sex and media. Concerned about media effects on the physical and mental health of children and adolescents, the AAP formed the Task Force on Children and Television in 1983. The Task Force issued the first AAP policy statement on media in following year. They asserted in their policy statement that, next to the family, television may be children’s most important source of information and the most powerful influence on their development.5 They also expressed the AAP’s concern that television’s portrayal of sex roles and sexuality was unrealistic and without health consequences … Address correspondence to Michael Rich, MD, MPH, Center on Media and Child Health, Children’s Hospital Boston/Harvard Medical School, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: michael.rich{at}childrens.harvard.edu