Faye Flamm, author of the popular column “Carnal Knowledge” (a sex-themed column about the natural world and humanity’s place in it),
set out to find whether scientific research had anything to say about sexual information hurting children. Here’s what Dr. David Bickham
, Staff Scientist at CMCH, had to say on the topic:

“A recent study showed a strong correlation between teen sex and the degradation of women in popular music.
‘It goes along with the idea that it’s really about the context,’ said Bickham, who works out of the
Center for Media and Child Health, run by Harvard and Children’s Hospital Boston. But lyrics about
sex per se didn’t have the same effect. ‘If you tell kids sex exists, they’re not going to run out and have sex,’ he said.”

A study in the August issue of Pediatrics has shown that the more teens listen to music with sexually degrading lyrics, the more likely they are to have sex earlier.

“This uses a more precise methodology than previous studies have, particularly around the issue of content,”
says Dr. Michael Rich
, Director of CMCH. “We as a society have lulled ourselves into thinking that if it’s entertainment it doesn’t affect us. There’s this artificial dichotomy we’ve drawn between education and entertainment – education is at school, and then
kids turn their brains off when they go home and listen to misogynistic lyrics.”

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A study in the August issue of Pediatrics has shown that teens who listen to sexually explicit lyrics are more likely to start having sex earlier than teens who don’t listen to this kind of music.

“Study after study have shown young people learn from the media they use, they learn violence from the media they use, they learn substance abuse from the media they use, and they are going to learn sexual behavior from the media they use,” says Dr. Michael Rich
, Director of CMCH.


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