Two new scientific reports confirm what most parents already know: The content of media children interact with is as important to their healthy development as how much of it they consume.

In the first study, published in the journal Pediatrics, 12 to 14-year-olds who were exposed to media with high sexual content were twice as likely to have sex by age 16 as those who interacted with less sexual material. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed the sexual content in 308 television shows, movies, songs and magazines popular with teens and then calculated each teen's "sexual media diet."

They found that the less parents talk to their kids about sex, the more likely the media is to "serve as a kind of sexual super peer that doesn't have the best interests of young people in mind," said Jane Brown, the study's lead researcher. The media, she said, tend to glamorize sex while leaving out the "crucial three C's: commitment, contraceptives and consequences."

In another study of 6 to 12-year-olds, researchers found that children who watched a lot of violent media spent less time with friends than those who watched non-violent shows. The study, which was conducted by the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital in Boston, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, also found that lonely children watch more violent TV. The researchers concluded that "violent television is making children more aggressive and more socially isolated. These children then in turn are attracted to more violent media, partially to fill their time."

Source: "What Matters Most" - A Weekly e-zine for Parents in Action.  Published by Parents' Action for Children.

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