Is TV Making Teenagers Pregnant?   

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A report came out last week that said teens who watch the raciest programming, like "Sex and the City," are more likely than their peers to be involved in a pregnancy.

In some quarters, frothy panic ensued. Parents let their teens watch those shows? Well, I'd never! (As if you can dictate everything a teen watches.)

We can relax a bit. Your teens aren't getting a DNA sample through your cable box.

Here's what the report, published in Pediatrics, claimed: "Adolescents who have high levels of exposure to television programs that contain sexual content are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the following three years as their peers who watch few such shows."

This could be bad news for the professional virgin Miley Cyrus, who has said "Sex and the City" is her favorite show. But breathe easy, Miley fans. It's probably not a birth sentence, and not just because Miley allegedly watches the sanitized basic-cable version.

There are two reasons the report should be taken with a grain of salt. First, it relied on teenagers to tell the truth about their sex lives over the phone. Second, there are some potential problems with the way researchers interpreted their data.

Researchers tracked 700 kids ranging in age from 12 to 17 for three years by conducting sporadic telephone interviews. Raise your hand if you think it's possible that teens, when asked to talk about their sex lives to a stranger on the phone, might have fibbed. So that's one red flag.

And that's not all. Some of the participants dropped out of the study. Their answers could have changed the results considerably. Some kids also refused to talk about their sexual experience with the researchers. They, too, were ignored. And, according to one doctor's analysis on The New York Times' Web site, the researchers also ignored teens who weren't sexually active.

What's more, teens who are sexually active might be more interested in shows depicting sexual situations. Which came first: the love of the show or the love of, well ... ?

So all we really know is this: Among teenagers willing to talk with strangers about their sex lives, the ones who watched the sexiest stuff were more likely to have been on the giving or receiving end of a pregnancy. That is, if they weren't lying about something so embarrassing and private.

The study's authors said their work was the first to show a link between watching sexual content on TV and teen pregnancy, but it's probably too soon to slip a prophylactic over your remote control, especially since the kids least likely to end up rocking the cradle watched the most TV overall. (Old married couples understand this completely. Why have sex when you can simply fall asleep watching "The Daily Show"?)

I am not a research scientist, nor do I play one on TV, but I am still fairly certain the one thing that causes teen pregnancy is sexual intercourse. I do know for a fact that it causes adult pregnancy, mostly among women, though there was that one transgendered man on Oprah who gave birth awhile back.

In any case, TV is not to blame for teenage pregnancy. Teenagers who have sex without using contraception are. So, the goal for parents should be to get their teens to put off sex as long as possible, and when the kids do become sexually active, to ensure they're protected every single time.

Shooting laser beams of disgust at the TV won't help us do this one bit.

This doesn't mean we should ignore the study, though, which was well intentioned and does contain some reasonable conclusions.

The first is that it's a good idea to limit exposure to sexual content on TV and balance the exposure with realistic consequences. In other words, don't let them watch too much, and make sure they're not watching programs that make it seem like unprotected sex doesn't lead to pregnancy and disease.

It's sort of sad that we need a study to prove this notion, of course.

Let's think about Oreos for a moment. Most of us already know that if you limit your exposure to Oreos by not stocking them in your pantry, then you are less likely to want to eat them, and if you don't eat entire bags of Oreos while you're sitting on the couch, you won't get a third chin.

Despite the "duh" factor, the point remains a good one. If you're surrounded by temptation, you might be tempted.

Teens don't need to watch a lot of salacious stuff on TV. They should be doing homework, pursuing athletic and artistic interests, and helping out around the house. If there's time for TV after all that, then fine.

But parents shouldn't hand over the remote control and walk away. The study also says that parents might be able to blunt the appeal of TV sex by watching shows with their kids and talking about what's going on.

This actually is a great way to get kids to watch less TV, I think. If anything is going to make "Sex and the City" less appealing, it's the idea of sitting next to Mom and Dad while watching Samantha pick up a stranger in a yoga class. How mortifying.

That's not what the study's authors intended, of course, even if they do have the right idea about encouraging parents and teens to share their pop culture interests.

This doesn't mean you have to like what they like, though there is plenty of stuff that appeals to both grown-ups and teens these days. Think about "Harry Potter" and "Twilight," and all those mothers with their cougar-crushes on Zac Efron.

It just means you have to be informed about what your kids are into. Pop culture is part of the teen experience, and parents who write off music, TV, books and movies as meaningless fluff are neglecting their duty. Just as you can't let your teens eat any old food, you can't let them consume pop culture indiscriminately, at least not without having the courage to talk about it and set some family standards.

And those family standards should be set with care. Around the time this study came out, the New Yorker wrote about research in red-state/blue-state sex, finding that evangelical teens were among the earliest to have sex of several religious groups studied.

It's not at all what you'd expect, especially because these teens are so very likely to hear strong abstinence-only messages and take virginity pledges.

It turns out that family support makes more of a difference than anything else when it comes to sexual activity. The article, by Margaret Talbot, said: "Adolescents who say that their families understand them, pay attention to their concerns, and have fun with them are more likely to delay intercourse, regardless of religiosity."

So take heed, parents. If you want to keep your teens from having babies, don't fear your TV set -- use it wisely.

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Martha Brockenbrough is MSN's Cinemama, for the Parents' Movie Guide. She is also the author of Things That Make Us [Sic], a guide to funny bad grammar published by St. Martin's press. She also blogs about family life for Cozi.com, and writes an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.

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