Teen pregnancy and how the media is influencing it Does Watching Sex on Television Predict Teen Pregnancy? Authors: Anita Chandra Steven C. Martino Rebecca L. Collin Marc N. Elliott Sandra H. Berry David E. Kanouse Angela Miu In this article a three year survey was done to see what is the most common cause for teen pregnancy and also if the media can be blamed, all authors came to one conclusion. With more and more cases every year, people are going out of their way to find the cause for teen pregnancy. Can Television be blamed? Television can be blamed for a lot, but can we blame television for the high teen pregnancy? Pediatricians say yes we can. More sexual content is being put up on television every year. This has been known to shape sexual attitudes and behavior under teens. Two sides are brought up in the article : exposure to televised sexual content predicted subsequent pregnancy for girls or responsibility for pregnancy for boys? After a three year survey was done the results came back. It was due to the sexual content that is being televised daily. 90% of teen were exposed to television with high sexual contents. This is the group in which teen pregnancy was much more common. The United States has the highest amount of teen pregnancies under industrialized countries. 20% of the sexually active young people (ages 15-19) fall pregnant. Teen pregnancy has a major influence on the young parents. Usually it is the mother that has to drop out of school to take care of the child. It is said that to reduce the pregnancy rates sexual content on television and media portrayal should be limited. Will this really help reduce pregnancy? According to the article this will decrease teen pregnancy by huge amounts. It is also discussed that if parents were to be more active in the life of their child, it would help. This has been tried so many times, yet the rates are still increasing? This is another form of proof that the media is influencing it. The fact that teens do it out of pure rebellion is not completely out of the picture, but television can promote rebellion.