Let’s ban sexually-themed television!

CHICAGO – Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior than among those who have tamer viewing tastes.

“Sex and the City,” anyone? That was one of the shows used in the research.

The new study is the first to link those viewing habits with teen pregnancy, said lead author Anita Chandra, a Rand Corp. behavioral scientist. Teens who watched the raciest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.

Previous research by some of the same scientists had already found that watching lots of sex on TV can influence teens to have sex at earlier ages.

Frankly, I think this research is useless.  Sure, it found a “link” between teenage pregnancy and sexually-themed television, but let’s remember that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation.

Who’s to say that teenagers who are already prone to being sexually active aren’t choosing to watch sexually themed television?  Meaning that their television choices are the result of their attitudes about sex and not the other way around.

As far as I can tell, that question isn’t answered in this study.  Which means it’s junk science and should be condemned as such before some busybody politician uses it to justify legislation limiting our freedoms.

We see studies like this all the time.  They tell us about “links” between one type of behavior and another and always conclude that one causes the other.  Sometimes that might be true and sometimes it might not, but these superficial researchers aren’t doing the public any favors.