Can Dirty Lyrics Lead To Over-Sexed Teens?

Unsurprising news alert! A new study shows that listening to songs with sexual lyrics can lead to higher and more risky sexual behavior among teenagers. Says the Canadian Press,

High exposure to lyrics that describe degrading sex is associated with high levels of sexual behaviour in teens, a new study suggests.

The research, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, was conducted in three large urban high schools in the Pittsburgh area, and involved asking Grade 9 students about the number of hours a day they listen to music and their favourite musical artists.

“Music exposure is growing … there is now unprecedented access to music and it’s also becoming more direct, more explicit,” said co-author Dr. Brian Primack of the Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“Adolescents are exposed to six to eight hours of mass media messages per day, and since it is such an important exposure, we need to know if this is affecting health.”

He noted, for example, that data have shown that up to 25 per cent of American teenage girls have sexually transmitted diseases.

STDs are particularly problematic in poor communities, Primack said, and that was a reason for focusing on three urban high schools where about half the kids take part in a lunch program – indicating they fall below a certain income level.

“We divided the cohort into three … those who were exposed to the lowest amount (of music with degrading references), those who were exposed to sort of the medium amount, those who were exposed to the most,” he said.

“And those who were exposed to the most were more than twice as likely to have had sexual intercourse, and that’s even controlling for all of the other factors that we looked at that we thought might be related to uptake of sexual intercourse.”

Do you limit the kind of music your children listen to? Do you want to start? Send us a comment and let us know.