Media Messages Harm Child, Teen Health

April 3, 2006 -- TV, movies, video games, and Internet use -- and inappropriate programs and ads -- hurt children's health.

That hurt begins early in the preschool years. It continues through adolescence, according to a wide-ranging series of studies in the April issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

It doesn't have to be this way. The power of the media can be a positive force. But the 15 new studies link media exposure to too-early sexual initiation, obesity, social isolation, and aggression.

It's a "major public health issue," Archives editors Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, and Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, say in a news release. They note that electronic media "are among the most profound influences on children in this country" and that "this intersects with many other issues that are critically important to child health, including violence, obesity, tobacco/alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviors."

WebMD took a closer look at three of the new studies.

TV and First Sex in Young Teens

We hear about the sexual content of television. But there have been surprisingly few scientific studies of the effect of television on kids' sexual behavior, says M. Bruce Edmonson, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Edmonson's research team looked at detailed information gathered in a national survey of adolescents. Each teen was interviewed two times, one year apart. The researchers looked at data on some 4,800 teens who were younger than 16 and who said they'd never had sexual intercourse.

At the second interview, about 15% of the teens said they'd started having sex. That's not surprising, Edmonson says, as that's about the national average. But other factors influenced the decision of these young teens to have sex. A major factor: TV.

TV and the Role of Parents

Overall, those who watched more than two hours of television a day were 35% more likely to have had sex. But this much television had much greater effects on some kids.

When the researchers looked at kids who said their parents strongly disapproved of them having sex, those who watched more than two hours of television a day were 70% more likely to have sex. And if sex-disapproving parents didn't monitor their teens' TV viewing, more than two hours a day of TV upped a teen's odds of sexual initiation by 250%.

"Ironically, among kids whose parents strongly disapprove of them having sex, there is a mixed message," Edmonson tells WebMD. "Parents try to tell kids they don't approve, but TV gives them other messages. And by the time kids get to be teens, parents often give up on monitoring the programs they watch."

By the time children are in their teens, it may be too late to begin restricting the kinds of TV they can watch, Edmonson says.