Exposure to sex on mass media affects a person's sexual self-presentation: study

Last month, researchers from New York University found that teens whose parents provide proper guidance and set rules were more likely to be cautious when it came to sex, WebMD reports. According to the study, over 75 percent of teenage pregnancy are unplanned, and in 2012, youth aged 20 to 24 had the highest rate of new HIV infections.

Researchers also found that among studies conducted between 1984 to 2014, which aimed to determine whether children whose parents were more watchful were more likely to delay sexual activity or use birth control, those children whose parents did set rules and monitored their kids, turned out to have sexual intercourse later in life.

A teenager's sexuality is often influenced by family values, peers, and what a teen observes from media. A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking shows that teens aged 13 to 17 who watched sexual reality television programs were more stimulated to produce an share sexual images of themselves on social media. Additionally, researchers found that sexual self-representation on social media led to more consumption of sexual reality TV, EurekAlert reports.

Healthcanal reports that the study was titled "The Relationship between Sexual Content on Mass Media and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study" and was authored by Laura Vandenbosch, Johanna van Oosten, and Jochen Peter of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Researchers analyzed the relationship between exposure to internet pornography and a teenager's social media content, and found that there were no links between watching pornographic online content and distributing sexually explicit images of themselves.

According to the researchers, this is one of the first studies to examine the relationship between exposure to sexual messages in mass media and adolescents' tendency to present themselves in a sexual way on social media.

"Mental health professionals should assess adolescents' viewing patterns to help identify possible risk behavior," editor in chief Brenda K. Wiederhold of the Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium recommended.

"This can then be used as an entry point to prevention measures by teaching adolescents to be more judicious consumers of electronic media," she said.

The researchers concluded that "mainstream mass media content has the potential to stimulate adolescents to produce and distribute their own sexual self-portrayals. In turn, the sexual content in mainstream mass media appears to be particularly appealing to social media users who present themselves in a sexual way."

The research team recommends additional studies to create a deeper understanding on how mainstream sexual content in mass media affects a teen's sexual behaviors on social media.