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Another Study Links Explicit Lyrics to Teen Sex
Once again, a scientific study has found an apparent connection between the type of music teenagers listen to and the age at which they begin to have sex.
The new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, found that 44.6% of those exposed to the most sexually explicit, most “degrading” lyrics had engaged in pre-marital sex, but that only 20.6% of those exposed to the least explicit lyrics had engaged in such immoral promiscuity.
Overall, 31% of the 711 teenagers age 15 to 16 had had intercourse.
Thus, by not protecting your teenager from explicit sexual lyrics, you double your child’s chances of winding up with a sexually transmitted disease or an out-of-wedlock child.
“These lyrics frequently portray aggressive males subduing submissive females,” said the lead author of the study, Brian Primack, “which may lead adolescents to incorporate this ‘script’ for sexual experience into their worldview.”
The researchers took educational achievement, ethnicity and other social factors into account.
Their paper, which appears in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM), reports, “Lyrics describing degrading sex tend to portray sex as expected, direct and uncomplicated.
“Such descriptions may offer scripts that adolescents feel compelled to play out, whether they are cast in the role of the female or the male partner.”
“Degrading” lyrics, the researchers say, describe sex acts as purely physical, graphic and dominant, but “non-degrading” lyrics portray sex “in a non-specific way and as a mutually consensual act,”
A 2006 study by the Rand Corp. found the same connection between music lyrics and sexual behavior among teenagers, but such studies are not new.
According to the AJPM, there are more than 750,000 teenage pregnancies in the United States alone each year. Also, nearly 25% of all female adolescents in American alone have sexually transmitted diseases and infections.
The connection between depictions of sex in the mass media and promiscuous sexual activity among children and teenagers can no longer be denied scientifically, factually or logically.
Please help MOVIEGUIDE® promote moral purity in the entertainment industry. Your financial support is absolutely vital in protecting the innocence and moral character of your children and teenagers.
With your help, and the power of God, we can encourage, and even force, the entertainment industry to clean up its act.
The health and future of our children and grandchildren are at grave risk!
– Source: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 02/24/09, and AFP at www.newsyahoo.com, 03/04/09.