A new study published by the RAND Corp. shows a link between teen pregnancies and teenagers’ exposure to sexual content.

MSNBC reported: ‘The study, released Monday and published in the November edition of the journal Pediatrics, found that teens exposed to high levels of sexual content on television were twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy in the following three years as teens with limited exposure.’

‘The study’s authors are quick to point out that the factors leading to teen pregnancies are varied and complex — but they say it’s important for parents, teachers and pediatricians to understand that TV can be one of them.’

“We were surprised to find this link,” said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. “But teens spend a good amount of their time watching television — an average of three hours a day — and we don’t know a lot about its impact on their health decisions …

“We don’t think that [TV] is necessarily more significant than some of the family and neighborhood factors that can lead to teen pregnancies. But even when we removed all the other factors, we still saw a compelling link between a high exposure to sexual content on television and teen pregnancies.”

The above makes sense to those who understand popular culture and its impact on society. When popular culture repeats a specific theme time and again, it will have an influence on society as a whole. This is just as logical as 1+1=2.

Whether producers want to admit it or not, their actions influence millions of individuals. If they decide to make sex ‘popular entertainment,’ society will slowly but surely accept this view. Of course parents play a major role in this process as well, they are the ones who are in the end responsible for their children.

But society as a whole also has a responsibility. It is this responsibility we in the West have neglected for too long.

Addendum: of course it has to be pointed out that one function of culture is to display society as it is. This means that we could very well speak of an interconnection here: more teens get pregnant and people are more open about sex in general, popular culture picks it up and uses it in shows, this in turn makes the situation even worse.