My take on the Gossip Girl OMG ad campaign, for purposes of this blog post.
Time for a little break in the onslaught of election news and voting tales... This recent article in the Washington Post is basically fundie-bait:
Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.
Ok, try to stop laughing over the fact that the Post uses the term "necking." Moving on...
The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.
When a study finds two things are "linked," that doesn't necessarily mean one causes the other. Maybe kids who watch more sexy TV have less parental supervision, as Matt at Pushback suggests, and therefore get it on more. But regardless of the study's merits, the abstinence-only-until-hetero-marriage crowd is up in arms, and ready to push their agenda.
"We have a highly sexualized culture that glamorizes sex," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association. "We really need to encourage schools to make abstinence-centered programs a priority."
Um, wow. Just look at that leap of logic. Huber says that because culture portrays sex in an unrealistic manner, we need to make sure kids get no information on sex other than "don't do it." Yikes.
This isn't to say that there's no room for a critique of how sex is portrayed on TV, especially in teen-targeted shows. Most pop-culture portrayals of sex are pretty messed up. But to say that abstinence-only education is the answer is just ridiculous. Kay has a more productive response: why don't these shows actually include a real discussion of sex? STIs, condoms, orgasms, the whole range of topics?
Many shows shy away from this because it makes the shows "too controversial," but what shows like Gossip Girl pride themselves on is being edgy. Wouldn't it be just as edgy to include some realistic conversations about sex? Teenagers aren't just going to stop having sex, no matter what goes on TV, but at least we can get the message out about sex with contraception.
Sure, sure, a "Chuck Bass finds out he has herpes" plot line wouldn't exactly fit with Gossip Girl's whole glamorous aesthetic. (Though "Serena's first orgasm" totally would! Nudge, nudge, GG writers...) But these shows sell drama, not just sex. And the real details of sex -- rather than just soft-core scenes that cut away before things get too steamy -- could actually make for some good dramatic plot lines. Not to mention, as Kay points out, truly edgy TV. You know you'd love it! xoxo.
(Ok, just kidding. Can you tell I'm a Gossip Girl fan? Perhaps an upcoming Un-Feminist Guilty Pleasure...)
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I watched a ton of violent and sexual programing when I was a kid. I turned out to be a pacifist who didn't have sex until I was 21, with the guy who turned out to be my life-time partner.
So...am I a freak? Or did I just have parents that put things in a proper context and didn't let TV raise me all by itself? Hmmmm...
I'm still amazed at how few movies or television shows put birth control in the picture at all when it comes to the sex scene--Love and Basketball included a scene where a condom featured prominently, and that's really the only one that comes to mind. (On cable, of course, a lot more pop up--Queer As Folk being an excellent example.)
What's interesting to me is the difference between YA books and TV shows in this regard. I seem to recall birth control coming up in the Gossip Girl books, and condoms come up in sex scenes all the time in a lot of street lit titles.
ive noticed in birth control doesnt get much mention in adult fiction, especially in books where there is explicit sex, but never an unplanned pregnancy, or even a planned pregnancy - a lot of the time im screaming "how are you not pregnant!!!" at the pages.
it's just like the scene in the ramona book where she asks when the construction worker goes to the bathroom. i just cant fathom the deus ex machina that keeps everyone from needing to go to the bathroom, or get pregnant from heterosexual sex or have to deal with cancer from smoking.
Being an avid video gamer, I'm generally disinclined to say that watching something on the TV will lead to altered behaviors elsewhere.
i hope tv writers can write real issues and information without the show/episode turning into "on a very special blossom."
hell, even SVU has turned into an hour "the more you know" spot and it's annoying to watch.
This is why Backlash remains a valid classic.
The alarmist reporting - and the PR by RAND - ignores the basic rule of "correlation does not equal causation". Plus the validity of this conclusion is overstated with weasel phrases such as "over 700 students".
The Reuter's story gives a few more specifics: "In findings that covered 718 teenagers, there were 91 pregnancies. The top 10th of adolescents who watched the most sexy programming were at double the risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy compared to the 10th who watched the fewest such programs, according to the study published in the journal Pediatrics."
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081103/tv_nm/us_children_pregnancy_media_5
"Tenth" meaning 10%, i.e. 71 teenagers, and "double the risk" meaning some unmentioned might be twice. A fraction of 71 teens in one group was bigger than 71 other teens, and this is the basis for alarmist claims about teens and TV.
The PR from Rand includes other questionable items - the initial age of the respondents was 12 to 17 and the final results compiled 3 years later, which means they reflect a vast change in sexual attitudes. The summary has a graph about probability but not any actual hard numbers.
source http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9398/index1.html
There's no journalistic examination of the underlying methodology: how "sexy" content was determined, how the information was gathered from these teens, question bias, etc.
Social science studies like this are at best "science adjacent", working in tiny samples and making claims not reproduced and verified by other research over periods of time.
A good rule is the more willing the authors are willing to fudge details in their sensational claims, the likely more the study is invalid.
I don't think anecdotal evidence to the contrary delegitimizes the work. Variability is normal, and in social science research some pretty weak correlations are considered significant. What delegitimizes not the work but the coverage of the work is exactly what you've identified - the failure to establish any causality. It seems just as likely to me that kids who have sex early might seek out depictions of sex on TV, whether it's for affirmation or for information. Or both having sex early and watching shows with a lot of sexual content might both be dependent on some other thing. So, phooey.
Especially if watching TV too much and teen pregnancies are both symptoms, perhaps of eating too many Arby's Double Cheddar Roast Beef Sandwiches.
I think there's absolutely pressure on young people to have sex in our culture, and the t.v. absolutely factors into that. People I know who are virgins for non-religious, non-terribly-deliberate reasons pretty much ubiquitously feel bad about themselves. A lot of teenagers seek either consciously or subconsciously to reproduce what they see in popular media in a variety of respects, especially ones who watch t.v. a lot. I know teenagers like that now, and knew ones like that when I was one myself.
But, I think you're absolutely right when you say abstinence-only education isn't the answer.
in social science research some pretty weak correlations are considered significant.
Which is why many consider "social science" to not be science, because it tolerates such dubious conclusions open to subjective thinking if not outright bias. There are ways to minimize such things, but that requires large sample sizes, rigorous boundaries and comparitive results over a period of time.
This study was taken from an initial survey of 2000 teens. Over half of that was discarded to get this useful result. In that step, as with others, the potential for confirmation bias is introduced depending on the criteria used.
Plus the final interview involved 20 year olds first interviewed at age 17 - faulty memory and changing life attitudes are a factor. There's also a gap between what people say or think they watch and what they actually watch.
Since we don't even know how the questions were worded or administered, let alone how the responses were quantified, the only evidence for judging validity is the presentation. And the plethora of fudged information and omission of details indicates it's more hype than fact.
I find your comment interesting. As a social scientist, I have felt myself an observer in the debate between those social scientists who vigorously advance our status as Real Scientists (TM) and those who scorn Real Science (TM)'s self-deluding conceptions of itself as inviolately accurate and objective. Your throwing around of terms like "bias" indicates you buy into the premise that Hard Science (TM) has inherent advantages in this area.
The conclusions being drawn from this study are what are debatable and questionable. They stem from the media, from casual readers like us, and from partisan and agenda-driven groups like the abstinece-only gruop named above. Until we have reviewed in full the journal-published methodology of the researchers, we can make no assumptions about what they assumed or how they gathered data (and professional anthropologists, at least, are skilled in crafting questions of nuance and precision, FYI).
Blaming social science and denigrating it as "not real science" (1) when social scientists have contributed the majority of information and observation that have bolstered progressive social movements like feminism, and (2) when Real Science (TM) has been proven to have its own, highly problematic and troublesome issues (insistence on fictive objectivity; false racial categories clouding epidemiological studies; etc.) is not going to improve anything.
Both social science and biological and physical sciences need improvement. But social science has at least been grappling with these issues and searching for better alternatives for the last 30-40 years. Real Science (TM) has been a lot slower to look itself in the mirror.
I'm not sure why you're framing this as "social science vs. real science," as nobody brought up "real science." (ObStupidJokeReference: "if you call yourself a science, you're probably not"). When I said that in the social science some pretty weak correlations are considered significant, I meant that as literally true - papers in which a Pearson's r of .4 or so is regarded as significant, which is typically not the case in the hard sciences.
Anyway, in catching up on my geeky blogs this evening this popped up, which is cool.
Whether or not a Pearson's r of .4 is significant or not depends upon many factors, all of which are (or should be) included in the social science articles. And it's also related to the p value whether or not the amount of variance explained is actually showing statistical significance. The reason that (if statistically significant) a Pearson's r of .4 is considered important is because of the inherent difficulties of studying social sciences.
We cannot control for as many factors as those in the hard sciences can because we're dealing with actual people in actual society. We can't bring them into labs, strip them of everything that might also explain variance, then see how they behave.
I went into the social sciences because I wanted the challenge. Having results scoffed at by those who have no idea what they're talking about just shows their ignorance. I don't mind wading through messy data (because when studying human behavior of pretty much any kind, the data will reflect the human-ness of the participants) because I think that the results are important.
As for the OP. This sounds like a straight up correlation that might be a jumping off point for further study (I often start my research with correlations just to see if I'm on the right track), might be misrepresented by the media who aren't trained to interpret social science in a realistic way, or the research might actually be bad.
I'm going to agree with Okra that we cannot really know whether this research is any kind of good or bad until we've seen the original source and their data.
Hi Melinda,
I was responding to Nitpicker05, who stated,
"Which is why many consider "social science" to not be science."
This IS indeed a couching of the question in an oppositional matter I find inappropriate, for the reasons I listed.
Ellestar is absolutely right about the limitations on social science. But, Many of those same limitations apply to many biological, medical/epidemiological and other "harder" science studies that erroneously take for granted their inherent objectivity and sterilization of bias. This problem extends beyond individual studies and into the disciplines' epistemologies as a whole.
i think that what is on Tv plays a partin the way children are growing up. Now a days, children are watching much more tv then they used to. Not only that but the shows that are on the tv are a lot different from ten years ago when full house, and fresh prince and family matters were taking up friday night tv. Now you have shows like the hills, gossip girl, desperate house wives, and plenty of other "reality" tv shows that have been lots of sex. Tv shows used to be based on family, and lately not so much. Also, it does not help that parents not watching their own children and not being invovled in what their children do also have an effect on this.
Yeah, I watch Gossip Girl...gotta see what Chuck is wearing! But like a few other folks have said, it is disturbing that birth control is never seen or discussed. And this is true for most shows. I think it definitely reinforces a belief that you're not supposed to talk about these things, when the opposite is true.
I am, of course, not for abstinence only education or shaming those who are sexually active. I also think sex on tv has its place, especially realistic responsible sex, but I am personally sick of the saturation of programs with sex. I work with kids and preteens and a ton of them are watching these shows and absorbing everything like a sponge. Not to mention that more attention is paid to putting something sexy in every episode instead of delivering a strong plot line. It is becoming increasingly difficult for parents to make sure their kids are watching shows that are appropriate for them, and really, there aren't that many. That is why I think having a good open dialogue with kids and sex ed are so important.
I think parents really play a part in how teens react to these shows. My mom used to watch shows that had "sexy" elements to them when I was a child, but she'd always make a comment like "they are too young" or "they need to use protection." I ended up losing my virginity at 17, and I'm 20 and *gasp* have never been pregnant.
Also, my cousin's friend got pregnant at 16 and my dad made time to talk to me about it. But I was never told to simply not have sex until married by my parents, it was always "when you're ready and with someone you love."
I read the report instead of the study, which is limiting of course. But my reaction was:
So teenagers who are more interested in sex than their peers watch more television shows that depict sexual situations. And teenagers who show this manifestation of sexual interest get pregnant more often than their peers who are less interested. This is surprising how?
Now that Barack Obama has been elected President, do you think abstinence-only education programs, like the ones Valerie Huber believes we need, will begin to die? Do you believe comprehensive sexual education programs will begin to take their place and that more schools will use these programs? Or do you think Barack being elected will have less of an effect, i.e. red states will continue to try to push abstinence while blue states do the opposite?
This is why I recommend Degrassi: The Next Generation(even though it's been going downhill this past season). Throughout the course of the show there has been 3 characters get pregnant, 2 STI storylines, and many mentions of contraceptives. Manny got pregnant in season 3 and had an abortion, Liberty was pregnant in season 5 and gave her baby up for adoption, we were introduced to Mia who had a two year old daughter in season 6 and Emma had a pregnancy scare that same year. In season 4 there was an outbreak of gonerrah due to kids having random oral sex. Darcy got claymidia in season 7 after being drug raped.