Sexual and Violent Influences in the Media

When adolescents are trying to find out who they are and where they belong, they turn to television (Fisher, 1994). This is a serious time for the shaping of adolescent's morals and values. This would be an ideal time for children to be informed about safe sex, sexual predators and S.T.I.s , however the average child spends approximately twenty eight hours a week watching television, which is twice as much time as they spend in school ("Facts about media violence and the effect on the American family," 1998). Unfortunately more often than not adolescents shape their lives after characters they can relate to on prime-time television (Fisher, 1994). When sixty percent of popular television shows depict sex and/or violence and the characters committing acts such as unsafe sex, sex with multiple partners and depictions of violence on women it leads adolescents to having their real-life decisions influenced to a certain extent and their feelings towards certain issues desensitized by what is done in the mainstream media (Fisher, 1994). Sex and violence in the media increase risk-taking in teenagers.…