It is interesting to note that the newspaper article in the Globe and Mail, Online edition for Monday, August 7, 2006, reporting on this piece generated 59 reader comments. This is not to say their inferences cannot be correct, just that they can't be 100% sure of it. There are many instances of children born of the same parents and with virtually the same environment, yet have vast differences in behavior. Should one conclude that wearing black causes youth to use drugs? The researchers went to great lengths to control different factors that could influence the behaviors being tested, but unless they also controlled who listened to what, they can only suggest a "possible" cause- and-effect relationship. In my experience, adolescents who dress in black and like to appear mysterious as "Goths," tend to use drugs more than their average peers. As other responders have pointed out, children who listen to music with degrading lyrics are more likely to be the type who will also engage in sexual relations earlier, period. This study in no way can be interpreted definitively to prove the cause-and-effect relationship it suggests. Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content could help delay the onset of sexual behavior. This result is consistent with sexual-script theory and suggests that cultural messages about expected sexual behavior among males and females may underlie the effect. Listening to music with degrading sexual lyrics is related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents, whereas this does not seem to be true of other sexual lyrics. In contrast, exposure to nondegrading sexual content was unrelated to changes in participants' sexual behavior.ĬONCLUSION. Multivariate regression analyses indicated that youth who listened to more degrading sexual content at T2 were more likely to subsequently initiate intercourse and to progress to more advanced levels of noncoital sexual activity, even after controlling for 18 respondent characteristics that might otherwise explain these relationships.
We measured initiation of intercourse and advancement in noncoital sexual activity level over a 2-year period. Data on listening habits were combined with results of an analysis of the sexual content of each artist's songs to create measures of exposure to 2 kinds of sexual content: degrading and nondegrading. Participants also indicated how frequently they listened to each of more than a dozen musical artists representing a variety of musical genres. A total of 1242 participants reported on their sexual behavior at all 3 time points a subsample of 938 were identified as virgins before music exposure for certain analyses. At all of the interviews, participants reported their sexual experience and responded to measures of more than a dozen factors known to be associated with adolescent sexual initiation. Participants were interviewed at baseline (T1), when they were 12 to 17 years old, and again 1 and 3 years later (T2 and T3). We conducted a national longitudinal telephone survey of 1461 adolescents. Although a previous longitudinal study has linked music video consumption and sexual risk behavior, no previous study has tested longitudinal associations between the content of music lyrics and subsequent changes in sexual experience, such as intercourse initiation, nor has any study explored whether exposure to different kinds of portrayals of sex has different effects.ĭESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS. Sexual themes are common in much of this music and range from romantic and playful to degrading and hostile. The average youth listens to music 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day. Music is an integral part of teens' lives. Popular music may contribute to early sex. A recent survey suggested that most sexually experienced teens wish they had waited longer to have intercourse other data indicate that unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are more common among those who begin sexual activity earlier. Early sexual activity is a significant problem in the United States.
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