Our
View: Sexy news flash: ‘study’ a
botched attempt
According
to an online ABC News story released
Monday, “Racy TV Shows Increase
Sex Activity, Study Says,” the
more sexual content kids are exposed
to in the media, the more likely they
are to engage in sexual activity at an
earlier age.
Add one more substandard attempt to the list of stupid research. The University
of North Carolina reached this not-so-glorious “conclusion.” Please,
someone, somewhere, reimburse the taxpayers of that wonderful state.
Their university has failed them this time because this research has bigger
holes in it than the Titanic.
Fortunately, we have an answer here at the Daily Forty-Niner that involves
zero taxpayer dollars.
Researchers have only to study what’s behind the hole of the front end
of a man’s boxers to realize why, even at a young age, he’s driven
to have sex. Studies have only to read about the pubescent process to figure
out why, even before age 18, a teenaged girl is curious about doing the “dirty
deed.”
Combine these two together and some form of sex is inevitable with guys and
girls, guys and guys or girls and girls.
Simple as that.
With unsubstantiated research like this, it becomes easy to ask why studies
like this one have to continue blaming the media, specifically television and
magazines as mentioned in the ABC article, for increasing the sex drive of
American teenagers. Do these people not realize that even before the advent
of television and the popularization of magazines with sexy covers teens were
driven to mingle — under the sheets?
Teens have always been super horny, even in the Middle Ages. It’s natural.
It’s in their hormones. It’s in their hearts and minds.
These studies need to disregard the media and stop playing the blame-game for
all of society’s problems.
Some things were around even before the mass media had a chance to influence
us. In other words, some things never change. Sex is just another one of those
things.
Maybe the real conclusion that should come from analyzing the media and its
influence on people’s sex drives today is that sex is more open in this
society than it used to be. Now, with increasing amounts of sexually related
items pervading the media, we are slowly riding ourselves of a Puritan, “sex-is-scary-and-should-be-shunned” past.
We partly can thank sexologist Alfred Kinsey for this openness. His research
on human sexuality helped influence American society’s social and cultural
attitudes toward sex and lead to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Fortunately, ABC also reported the criticisms of this so-called study. We weren’t
the only the ones to peer easily through its Swiss cheese-like body logic.
According to the article, the survey “only included 1,017 teens in three
public school districts in North Carolina, and did not take into account exposure
to sexual content on the Internet.”
In addition, the article quoted Julia A. Ericksen, a sociology professor at
Temple University in Philadelphia.
She said it’s easy to oversimplify such a complex issue, and that puberty
also influences teenage sexual behavior.
Thank you, professor Ericksen. It’s refreshing to know someone in the “City
of Brotherly Love” also understands the effects of the glorious stage
of life that is puberty. Good to know we weren’t the only ones paying
attention in sex education.
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