The
incorporation of technology in education had been my personal inquiry project
for almost a year now. Throughout this time, I have certainly fielded some
hard-hitting questions and concerns from many sceptics. I have found that the
biggest worry seems to revolve around the impact that technology, namely the
internet, has on adolescents and their developing lifestyles. In pursuit of
more information on this concern, I came across an interesting study based in
the Netherlands called “Shake it Baby,
Shake it”: Media Preferences, Sexual
Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents written by Tom F. M. ter
Bogt, Rutger C. M. Engels, Sanne Bogers, and Monique Kloosterman. Theirs is one
of the many studies investigating the relationship between media and, as some
would say, the apparent over-sexualisation of teenagers. This study sets out to
discover the link between the adolescent media exposure and preferences and corresponding
sexual attitudes and gender stereotypes. As I am reviewing this study for my
adolescent psychology course, I will not go into too much detail; however, I
found the need to share the somewhat unanticipated research results.
As it turns out,
the study surprisingly did not find a strong enough correlation between the
amount of media exposure adolescents were getting and an increase in permissive
sexual attitudes and gender stereotypes. So the hours they seem to spend on the
internet and their smart phones does not, in this study, seem to impact them a
great deal in this regard. Another result did find a link between hip-hop and
hard-house music and adolescent ideas that women should be sexy and that men
should be tough and cool – big surprise there. Preferences for these types of
music also correlated with permissive sexual attitudes in adolescents. This comes
as no surprise to anyone who has actually listened to the lyrics of some of
these genres.
There was one
result, however, that was quite concerning. The study showed that there was a significant
correlation between adolescent preferences for explicit erotic internet content
and potentially harmful attitudes about sex and gender stereotypes. The link itself
is not so surprising, but more so the fact that the study isolated this media
marker as being the single most important indicator of these attitudes. Now we
all know, and have experienced once, the period of sexual curiosity that all
adolescents navigate. However; the prevalence and ease of access to pornography
via the internet could be fundamentally throwing a wrench into the natural
sexual development of teens. The image of sex being endorsed by this content is
often highly idealized and contains possible violent or sexist undertones, all
of which can be accessed with a smartphone anytime anywhere. Fifteen years ago
most families only had one computer, which was often placed in a public area of
the house. Now, most youth have their own computers AND their own smartphones,
giving them complete and total access to whatever curiosity they might follow,
including sexual curiosity.
Now as I’ve
stated inexhaustibly in other blog posts, the only solution to this issue is
more youth education about the internet, pornography and sex. It may be an
uncomfortable subject, but if we don’t address it, we will be faced with an
entire generation of youth who have skewed views of healthy sexual
relationships and lifestyles.
Ter Bogt, Tom, Rutger C. M. Engels, Sanne Bogers, & Monique Kloosterman. "'Shake it Baby, Shake it': Media
Preferences, Sexual Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents." Sex Roles 63.11 (2010): 844-859. EBSCO. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
