Yahoo! News Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical WriterMon Aug 7, 12:51 AM ET Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found. Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found. Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found. Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music. Among heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music. Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said. "We think that really lowers kids' inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful" about sexual decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said. The study, based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, appears in the August issue of Pediatrics, being released Monday. 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. Natasha Ramsey, a 17-year-old from New Brunswick, N.J., said she and other teens sometimes listen to sexually explicit songs because they like 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." "A lot of teens think that's the way they're supposed to be, they think that's the cool thing to do. Because it's so common, it's accepted," said Ramsey, a teen editor for Sexetc.org, a teen sexual health Web site produced at Rutgers University. "Teens will try to deny it, they'll say 'No, it's not the music,' but it IS the music. That has one of the biggest impacts on our lives," Ramsey said. The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the U.S. recording industry, declined to comment on the findings. Benjamin Chavis, chief executive officer of the Hip-Hip Summit Action Network, a coalition of hip-hop musicians and recording industry executives, said explicit music lyrics are a cultural expression that reflect "social and economic realities." "We caution rushing to judgment that music more than any other factor is a causative factor" for teens initiating sex, Chavis said. Martino said the researchers tried to account for other factors that could affect teens' sexual behavior, including parental permissiveness, and still found explicit lyrics had a strong influence. However, Yvonne K. Fulbright, a New York-based sex researcher and author, said factors including peer pressure, self-esteem and home environment are probably more influential than the research suggests. "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." David Walsh, a psychologist who heads the National Institute on Media and the Family, said the results make sense, and echo research on the influence of videos and other visual media. The brain's impulse-control center undergoes "major construction" during the teen years at the same time that an interest in sex starts to blossom, he said. Add sexually arousing lyrics and "it's not that surprising that a kid with a heavier diet of that ... would be at greater risk for sexual behavior," Walsh said. Martino said parents, educators and teens themselves need to think more critically about messages in music lyrics. Fulbright agreed. "A healthy home atmosphere is one that allows a child to investigate what pop culture has to offer and at the same time say 'I know this is a fun song but you know that it's not right to treat women this way or this isn't a good person to have as a role model,'" she said.
Zzzztroll, too. Anyone who gets his jollies off of pedophile jokes you can never be sure of. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if zzztroll goes around in a trenchcoat exposing his aging organs to innocent children whilst shouting, "Doh! Bush is evil! Doh!" at them...
Read up on the Goals 2000 educational program. ( aka dumbing down of america ) Sex lyrics have been around forever. Only recently in the last decade or so have teenagers increased in promiscuity. This type of behavior is being encouraged by schools and media. These days both mom and dad have to work ( no choice in America). Kids are left with government provided (subsidized) care from early child hood. American kids are being programmed from birth ( look at the cartoons they watch). Notice quality of PBS child programming when you grew up and the degraded quality now. Like I said, read up on Goals 2000, the organized dumbing down of America continues. Enjoy.
Get bent, you fucking retards. Teenagers never needed an excuse. Thats how it is. Its how it always was. Its how it is.. and they are still your cannon fodder.
Exactly! That article has a reversed cause & effect relationship. It's not the music that causes sexual behavior, teenagers who are sexually promiscuous PICKS that kind of music. It all comes down to upbringing and a lot of parents nowadays refuse to take responsibility for raising their kids and installing them with values and morals. However, the lifestyle you have IS a choice in America. No one is forcing you to buy new BMWs every couple of years or live in McMansions and getting hocked to the gills for 20-30 years. The kids end up missing out on good parenting as a result...
No, the American media and specially its current crop of politicians have a ongoing concerted sub liminal messaging system to induce its citizens to buy more and get into debt more. Recall the many tv appearances by Bush telling people to keep on buying till they dropped dead. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a1NorWYIh4Fk&refer=us U.S. Consumer Credit Unexpectedly Accelerated in June (Update2) Instead, consumers are turning to credit card debt. American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup all reported higher second-quarter profit from credit cards, partly because a new law making it harder for Americans to file for bankruptcy protection led to fewer defaults. Did you follow that? Bush and national leaders and the media keep on potraying that living beyond ones means is the "American" thing to do. Yet they are inducing massive inflation and eroding purchasing power on one hand, and on the other hand they're making it more expensive to borrow this continually deflating purchasing power. And once the greedy little pig is way too much in debt, there's no way to restructure! You're permanently screwd. Welcome to servitude. And what do these greedy little pigs say?!! They say, Hey that's right!! "I won't let the terrorists kill my life style"!!!! Have you ever had fattened slow roasted pig? <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/1818/slowroastedgreedypigrn9.png" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>
Heh, heh... regardless of what the external marketing messages are, YOU are still responsible for what you take in and accept as "the truth". Ultimately, people's situations in life are 100% their choice. Unfortunately, most people get get to this stage of enlightenment and can't teach their kids the same. Most people are just sheep! idiots! Yes, I'm having a Latin party in 2-weeks with salsa-dancing, mojitos, costumes, etc. AND a pig-roast in a firepit!
It's much more complicated than that. It's a range of subliminal issues that are working non stop on the core family structure simultaneously. womens lib movement, the horrendous quality of childrens TV programming, the definition of the american life style. The womens lib movement has succeeded in forming the notion that a "full filling life" for a modern woman means "balancing" a full time career and also trying to be a full time mother. When in reality the 2 are mutually exclusive. When a woman works 40 to 50 hours, that's an average of 8 hours a day, add 2 hours of commuting time per day between picking kids up, groceries, errands. That's 10 hours a day being spent away from the family. Same goes for the man in the family. So out of a regular day, how much time do children have with their parents? The answer is, maybe around 2 hours in a regular day. And in those 2 hours the parents are too tired to do any quality parenting. So then the question is, at their most productive learning stage, who and what is substituting for the parenting? In school you have the Education 2000 type bull shit, which dumbs down the critical thinking ability of children. After school, kids either go to child care ( who knows what goes on there!! ) or get dropped off at home and spend time watching nonsense TV ( shit dramas where whose girlfriend slept with whose boyfriend) which totally obliterate critical thinking abilities. So when the "popular kids" at school watch this smut on "popular kids TV" ( because Teen Magazine says so, so it must be true ) where the "popular kids" in the TV show are fucking around every 5 minutes ( Teen Magazine says that's OK ), what do you think happens to the rest of the children at school? They see the "popular kids" fucking around and since the popular kids start the trends, the rest of the kids in the school join in because of peer pressure ( The pressure of thinking you're different because you try so hard to be like everyone else ). So what are the most popular themes in "Childrens programming"? SEX and VIOLENCE! Turn on TV? 90% all sex and violence. Turn on the news? all violence. Open a Magazine? all Sex. Listen to music? all sex and violence. Play video games? All violence and Sex. So are you getting the common theme here? Children are being desensitized to Sex and Violence. When they start fucking around at 12 or 13 guess what schools do? ( unbelievably )They pass out condoms?!! When kids watch real death and destruction on TV ( like in Lebanon), they no longer care. They're been desensitized by well organized and continuous programming. For the parents, it's the same subliminal programming which removes critical thinking abilities. Your very own president repeatedly tells you that going into debt to live the American life style is an accepted and even more important, it's Expected of you to do so! So yes I agree that the bottom line is personal responsibility. However if you have been programmed to be devoid of any critical thinking abilities, the definition of personal responsibility can be changed from "paying off all my debts and living within my means" to personal responsibility meaning, "I have to live on credit because everyone does so, and I don't want to be any different. And if I don't live beyond my means, I'm being anti-american because I'm letting terrorists change my lifestyle". If someone asks you what the definition of the American lifestyle is, what pops into your mind right away? (You see, it's just not the Americans who are being programmed) <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8325/usnewsin4.png" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>