Parents are endlessly warned about the corrupting influence of pornography on children, but a new study shows sex scenes in mainstream movies can be just as damaging.
Psychologists found that kids exposed to sexy scenes in Hollywood films were more likely to be promiscuous, have unprotected sex, and lose their virginity at a younger age.
Indeed, for every hour of exposure to sexual content in films, the teens studied were more than five times more likely to lose their virginity before their 18th birthday.
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“Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners,” study leader Dr Ross O’Hara said.
“This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages.”
Researchers from Dartmoor College in the UK studied 1228 teens between the ages of 12 and 14.
Each child was asked to identify which popular films they had seen from a random list of 50.
Six years later, the participants were questioned about their sexual behaviour, including how old they were when they became sexually active, how many partners they had and whether they had used condoms.
The findings proved a link between exposure to sex on screen and sexual behaviour.
The same researchers also analysed the sexual content of 684 of the highest-grossing films between 1998 and 2004.
Surprisingly, more than a third of G-rated movies had “sexual content”, which for the purpose of the study was defined as anything from kissing to full-blown sex scenes.
More than 50 percent of PG films contained sexual content, and four in five R-rated films.
Related: What all parents need to know about sexting
The raunchiest films were Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, 40 Days and 40 Nights and American Pie.
“These movies appear to fundamentally influence their personality through changes in sensation-seeking, which has far-reaching implications for all of their risk-taking behaviours,” Dr O’Hara said.
This study was published in the current issue of Psychological Science.
Video: Sexualising our children
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