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Media influences perception of sexual activity
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Written by Ashley Heywood, Senior Editor
Listen to the rumor mill around school and it would be easy to believe that “everyone is doing it.” Watch a few popular TV shows and movies and it would be easy to think that the more sexual partners a person has, the better.
The media suggest that promiscuity is the norm, and students make assumptions that in turn affect their decisions relating to sex and their sexual activity.
Many students assume the vast majority of their peers are sexually active when statistics prove otherwise. According to the N.C. Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2009 only 47.6 percent of high school students have had sex, but when students were asked to estimate the number of their peers who are sexually active they tend to overestimate. In a Wingspan survey of 238 students, more than 70 percent assumed the sexual activity rate of high school students to be 70 percent or more. Only 12 percent of students assumed the number of sexually active high school students from the 2009 survey.
“I do think a good number of people do have sex, but I do think that people say they have just to say that they have had sex,” senior Courtney Hayes said. “Tons of people think that just because they hear a rumor that everyone is sexually active, but in reality, probably the majority of students at West haven’t had sex. Just because one person has sex in a group of friends makes other people think that the majority of people are having sex when it’s really only a few people.”
The cause of this increased perception is partly due to the increasingly sexual influence in adolescent media. Movies and television shows display sex and sexual promiscuity as casual and widespread.
An average hour of primetime television on the three major U.S. networks includes approximately 15 sexual acts, words or innuendos. According to a study done by sexual motivation researchers, nearly all of these instances involve unmarried partners, about half of which have no prior romantic involvement, and few communicate any concern for birth control.
“The media is full of sex; they make it seem cheap, like it’s just for fun, like it’s not a big deal when in actuality it’s one of the most beautiful, precious things in life,” Hayes said. “In movies for guys, all sex is about is a hot girl, and they hook up. It means nothing. But in girls’ movies they show true love, like in The Notebook. All those movies like James Bond where a guy just picks up a girl for sex teach people that that is OK and that it’s what is expected. It teaches girls that in order to get a guy they have to be sexy and that guys don’t have to be emotionally involved with someone to get sex. What the media protrays is unrealistic.”
Such exposure to sexual material in adolescence produces a passive if not casual attitude towards sexual activity. There has been a shift from a culture of abstinence to now nearly a nonchalant attitude towards sexual activity. Adolescents perceive a high rate of sexual activity, which can influence their own opinions and actions towards sex.
“Personally I think sex is a big deal but I don’t think a lot of people do. Movies like Friends with Benefits make it more casual like sex isn’t a big deal. It lessens the seriousness of it,” junior Kelsey Vaughn said. “People think sex isn’t serious and that it is just something that happens all the time.”
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