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SEXY LYRICS MAY LEAD TO EARLY SEXUAL INTERCOURSE IN TEENS STUDY FINDS: Filthy sex talk in songs trigger sexual activity; abstinence message ignored
Telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17 were conducted over three years was the basis for the findings. AP reports that most participants were virgins when they were first questioned in 2001. Follow-up interviews were done in 2002 and 2004 to see if music choice had influenced subsequent behavior.
Fifty-one percent of listeners who heard the degrading lyrics frequently started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually explicit music.
Lead author of the study Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. said they looked for factors other than music that could affect teens' sexual behavior, including parental permissiveness, and still found explicit lyrics had a prevalent impact.
Yvonne K. Fulbright, a New York-based sex researcher and author disagrees.
"It's a little dangerous to just pinpoint one thing. You have to look at everything that's going on in a young person's life," she said. "When somebody has a healthy sense of themselves, they don't take these lyrics too seriously." Fulbright believes factors including peer pressure, self-esteem and home environment are probably more influential than the research suggests.
New Brunswick, N.J. resident, 17-year-old Natasha Ramsey, said she and other teens are drawn to crass lyrical content because of the beat.
"I won't really realize that the person is talking about having sex or raping a girl," she said. Even so, the message "is being beaten into the teens' heads," she said. "We don't even really realize how much."
American teens at large are not getting the message of abstinence. The consequences are grave:
According to Concerned Women of America, the United States is still the industrialized nations' world leader in teen pregnancies and STDs, and a report by Child Trends revealed few teens using birth control. Less than 30 percent of females and less than half of males said they consistently use condoms, and nearly 20 percent of females and over 10 percent of males reported that they never use a condom.
The study appears in the August issue of Pediatrics
