Literature about American teens and media tend to focus on how mass-produced media may impact so-called risky teen behavior, such as sex and specifically sex that leads to pregnancy. There is also plenty of literature about sex education strategies and what has and has not worked. Newer literature has only begun to assess emerging youth-produced media as a sex education tool that could take advantage of lessons learned from how media impacts teen sexual behavior and what sex education approaches engage teens the most. However, the literature reviewed provides significant groundwork to launch future research on using youth-produced media to improve outcomes for American teen sexual behavior.
Teens and Sexual Content on TV
It is much easier to find literature depicting strong correlations between television viewing and teen smoking, obesity and violence than between television viewing and sexual behavior. In “Media and Risky Behaviors”, the most common model for understanding how television content impacts teen bad behavior is whether increased viewing of, for example, smoking, leads to increased teen smoking (Escobar-Chaves and Anderson, 2008). When it comes to determining links between teens watching sexual content and teen “early sexual initiation”, the links are not as clear for several reasons.
One reason is studies often mention how sexual content on television probably impacts teens and their sexual behavior differently according to race and class (Solderman et al, 1988; Chandra et al, 2008), yet fail to elaborate on these differences in a cohesive manner. Additionally, they do not examine cross-sections of race and class, such as how wealthy black teens select and use media with sexual content differently from poor black teens.
Also, mass media, including television with sexual content, has a reflexive relationship with popular opinion and therefore re-calibrates itself constantly, both to keep up with what viewers—especially young viewers—want and to prevent policy intervention (Jordan, 2008). This is an extremely important point to consider because it gives agency to teen viewers as opposed to understanding them as passive blank slates. Using that point, literature that discusses specific content is likely to be dated because media makers evolve their content to stay current and to steer clear of anger from adults like parents, educators and policy-makers. In “Children’s Media Policy” Jordan discusses mostly how these adults impact media content but does not sufficiently address how youth feedback changes media content.
Literature on the phenomenon of para-social interaction offers another level of understanding of how teens interact with media and use it to form identities. In “Loneliness, Gender, and Parasocial Interaction: A Uses and Gratifications Approach”, Wang et al. demonstrate how men and women use media differently to alleviate loneliness (2008). Sexual content was not defined in the study and the population they studied was by far mostly white and also college-age youth, neither of which offers insight as to how non-white poor teens interact with television characters. Such an examination is approached in the now outdated “Television and Movie Behaviors of Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Adolescents” (Solderman, 1988), however that study focuses on revealing that black teens watch far more sexual content than white teens in general.
Recent literature does illustrate increased negative sexual outcomes, like teen pregnancy, related to increased teen consumption of sexual content on television, such as Chandra et al’s “Does Watching Sex on Television Predict Teen Pregnancy?” (2008). Chandra points out that inaccurate portrayals of risks and consequences of most sexual content on television is the bigger problem than the abundance of and teen exposure to sexual content alone. This point of view is echoed by Jaworski’s “Reproductive justice and media framing” (2009) and in several news and magazine articles crying out for better media portrayals of safe sex and negative sex consequences, especially pregnancy (Wallis, 2005; Navarro, 2007; Kliff, 2008).
In general, literature thoroughly supports that complex and evolving reflexive relationships exist between teens and sexual content on television. A common sentiment expressed in literature about teen exposure to sexual content and increase in pregnancy is that media makers should be held responsible and should change their programming to better inform teen audiences about risks of sexual activity. What lacks overall in much literature about sexual content and teens—in addition to consistent focused specification about differences among races and classes and recognition of teens’ agency as non-passive viewers—is a) any differentiation or qualification of what kind of “sexual content” leads to worse outcomes; and b) discussions of how media created by teens measures up to mass media in terms of sexual content and messaging.
Possible Reception and Effects of Mediated Sex Education
Despite literature that draws connections between teen consumption of sexual content and teen sexual behavior, when it comes to teens actively seeking sex education some literature argues that while media is a source of information they would rather go to their trusted adults. In “Sources and Timing of Sex Education” (2005) and “Adolescents’ Preference for Source of Sex Education” (2004) Somers and Surmann evaluate where teens go to get accurate sex education and where they want to get accurate sex education, respectively. Considering how much teens consume sexual content on television, it is an important assertion that when teens want proper sex education they would prefer to speak with an adult than watch television and that they do not consider mass media to be a significant source of their information about sex. Somers and Surmann do not, however, sufficiently qualify the type of “media” that ranks low on teens’ preferred sex education sources or specify whether media designed specifically for sex education is appealing for teens. Furthermore, other research routinely contends that teens do consider media to be an important source of sex education, regardless of whether it is ranked above parents and peers (Brown and Keller, 2000; Pinkleton and Austin et al., 2008).
Considering current/recent television programs like “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” (MTV, 2009-present) and “The Baby Borrowers” (NBC, 2008), which blend voyeuristic reality entertainment with equally devastating and hope-giving portrayals of teen pregnancy and parenting, it seems wrong to cluster all media as being not useful and not appealing to teen audiences for sex education purposes. Although formal academic research has not been conducted on the impact of these latest television series and would be greatly useful, the series have quickly generated news items such as “Test-Driving Parenthood is a Teenage Wake-up Call” (Bellafonte, 2008) and “’16 and Pregnant’ Deftly Plumbs the Parent Trap” (Shales, 2009).
Both articles praise “16 and Pregnant” and “The Baby Borrowers” for depicting teen parenting—and parenting in general—as an immense struggle with a focus on the negative impact that parenting has on the teens’ romantic and familial relationships and their future goals for education. The articles are also written from adult spectator perspectives with no discussion of how these shows could be employed as teaching tools for teens regarding sexual behavior. Furthermore, these shows depict teens but are produced and distributed by adults, both of which may impact how teens seek them out and respond to them as potential teaching tools.
A more technical term for mediated education is “entertainment-education” as noted in Moyer-Guse and Nabi’s “Explaining the Effects of Narrative in an Entertainment Television Program” (2009). Moyer-Guse and Nabi showed teens narrative and non-narrative television programs about teens facing an unplanned pregnancy. The narrative television example shown to teens was one episode of “The OC” (Fox, 2003-2007) and the non-narrative was a news piece produced by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Questionnaires showed that teens felt less persuaded and felt more similar to characters on “The OC” than with the real-life, really pregnant teens. Para-social interaction at least temporarily inspired the teens to claim they would have safer sex in the future because of the narrative they had viewed, which did not happen nearly as strongly for the teens who viewed the non-narrative news piece. The accumulative effects that narratives about teen pregnancy may have on teens deciding to have safer sex (which was one temporary outcome of this particular study) would require further research with more media samples and a longitudinal study.
Shows like “16 and Pregnant” and “The Baby Borrowers” may not then, as the above literature suggests, fare well with teens if they feel preached to or manipulated. This result suggests both an enormous hurdle and an enormous insight for sex educators desiring to use media to their advantage. Somers and Surmann’s work and Moyer-Guse and Nabi’s work may form a tentative cohesive vision of what kind of mediated sex education may prove useful in future endeavors to create mediated sex education tools.
More literature is needed about what kind of television programs directed at teens could yield positive effects on teen sexual behavior such as pregnancy. From the above literature, television programs that use fictional narratives and characters that a) engenders strong para-social interaction among teens; b) do not cause teens to perceive persuasion; and c) that teens can trust as a legitimate source because the programs are at least guided adults like educators and parents may strike the delicate balance apparently needed to both attract teen viewership and inspire more positive sexual behaviors.
Peer-led Sex Education and Youth-Produced Media
As media tools become cheaper, simpler and more accessible to more populations, youth-produced media has grown into an important branch of sex education in the form of non-profits (e.g. Scenarios USA, Conscious Youth Media Crew, Global Action Project), school-based media literacy programs and even special programs designed by mass media companies (e.g. PBS’ Listen Up!).
Research of one peer-led media literacy workshop proposes that teens may trust and value sex education led by peers about sexual content in television (Pinkleton and Austin et al., 2008). Pinkleton and Austin et al. determined that teens trusted and valued the peer-led media literacy program and that the teens’ attitudes about sexual activity improved. The results did not assess actual sexual behavior after the study was complete, which was attributed to lack of approval from the Institutional Review Board. The program described in this study was designed, as most media literacy programs presumably would be, by adults hoping to reduce negative sexual outcomes such as pregnancy and the program was also constricted by both state and federal requirements requiring abstinence-based education. Nonetheless Pinkleton and Austin’s preliminary findings that teens do trust and value peer-led sex education and are receptive to developing a critical, engaged mind regarding media and sexual messaging provide a springboard for examining contemporary youth-produced media and related rhetoric.
At this point rhetoric about youth-produced media and its potential impact on teens and their sexual health is largely limited to institutional data provided by the youth-produced media organizations themselves; articles detailing the challenges faced by youth-produced media organizations (Donnelly, 2010); and non-critical organizational descriptions written by advocates to promote the programs (Sweeney, 2005), while quantitative non-anecdotal research on its effectiveness appears to be lagging.
What is so exciting about the impact potential of youth-produced media—and what remains to be researched—is that it combines peer-led sex education, para-social interaction, and tentatively trustworthy adult supervision to ensure teens feel confident in the sex education they may take from it. The four examples of youth-produced media programs listed earlier all exist in large urban centers and target teens of color for participation. Narrative styles include fiction, performance and documentary around issues related to teens and especially sexual health issues, and the level of adult participation and structuring surely varies between organizations and programs.
Future Research to Evaluate and Improve Youth-Produced Media
A rather large area of concern that requires more literature is how adult prerogatives, assumptions and agendas can override and manipulate youth creativity during the process of creating, producing and distributing youth-produced media. Adults are presumably needed to design, fund, and execute any youth-produced media program because teens are not independently wealthy. Also, as we have seen demonstrated in other literature, teens do seek out and respond well to adult involvement around sexual health issues, so adult involvement in youth-produced media may be significant for that reason. However, a rather old examination of one playwriting program designed for teen mothers illustrates well the negative impacts adult supervisors can inflict upon youth creativity (Kelly, 1997).
In the playwriting program, teens expected to create their own messages based on complex emotions and experience related to becoming young parents, yet the adults directing the program and the adult members of the audience at the final production could not help but reflect their own values and agendas. This frustrated the teen mothers as they too had important messages, one of which was the perspective that teen motherhood can be extremely rewarding and positive as well as extremely tough. Kelly proposes that the lesson here may be that open communication must be established and goals negotiated between adults and teens to avoid unintentional abuse or manipulation.
Since adult involvement is needed for a variety of reasons in youth-produced media, especially broadcast media, future research that evaluates adult involvement in youth-produced media is necessary.
In terms of youth-produced media, future research that evaluates impacts on participating teens, participating adults, and of course on reducing negative sexual outcomes like teen pregnancy is also needed to ensure the evolving quality of the media produced and to ensure its very future through private and even government funding. What may be useful is to consider having teens help design the terms by which to measure the effectiveness of youth-produced media. So much of what we as adults hope for when we examine any program aimed at improving teenage sexual behavior is to find ways to make teens not get pregnant and, consequently, not become parents. While there is no defensible reason to use youth-produced media to encourage teens to become parents, future research about youth-produced media could be structured to assess more robust outcomes from teens participating in and consuming youth-produced media, beyond reduced teen pregnancy.
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