Published 16 February 2010
Published 16 February 2010
Jochen Peter makes a plea for people not to get too worked up about the influence of the media on young people's sexual development, but equally not to trivialise it
Research has indicated that viewing sexual content on TV and online changes young people's attitudes to sex. The popular explanation that young people simply imitate what they see is unsatisfactory, according to communications academic Dr Jochen Peter. Peter received a Vidi grant of more than €800,000 for his research into the question of why, and under what circumstances, sex in the media influences the sexual attitudes and behaviour of adolescents.
Jochen Peter gets straight to the point. ‘Whether we like it or not, many young people enjoy watching pornography and other forms of sexual media content (SMC),' he says. Peer pressure plays a limited role; for the most part, they consume this content because they like it and enjoy it. One of the effects of this is that young people's attitudes to sex change slightly. Young people are a little less disapproving of casual sex than they were a few years ago. They're a bit more insecure and less satisfied with their own sexual experiences, and they have a more negative and sexist image of women. ‘This certainly doesn't apply to all young people equally, and other influences, such as friends and parents, may be stronger,' emphasises Peter. 'But the effects of the media on the sexual development of adolescents are undeniable.'
Past research has already concluded that effects do exist, but the explanation of why and under what circumstances such effects occur has rarely been investigated. Researchers have suggested that adolescents have a tendency to imitate what they see in the media. ‘That theory is too simplistic and doesn't really explain very much. In all this time, one aspect has remained under-exposed, and that's how adolescents experience SMC and the pleasure they get from watching it. My theory is that the more intense the experience, the more young people are "absorbed" by what they see, and the more they experience the content as realistic. This less critical stance could be the core explanation for changes in attitudes and behaviour.'
To test this hypothesis, Peter has developed the ‘experiential value concept', which he plans to use to analyse the experiential value of SMC in soaps/reality programmes, music videos and pornography and test it amongst adolescents. He'll be analysing the characteristics of these various kinds of content, including camera point-of-view, focus, sound, and the type of sex shown. But he'll also be looking at other characteristics, such as the presence or absence of pleasure, how explicit the content is, how much nudity there is and what type, and what kind of language the characters use. By doing this, it will be possible to compare different types of content and to assess them as having a high or low experiential value. Peter hopes ultimately to better understand how young people interpret relationships between men and women, sexual stereotypes or risky sexual behaviour in SMC.
Following this, Peter will test a group of young people aged 12 to 20 to see if a greater experiential value indeed leads to an increase in ‘transportation', or the extent to which young people are absorbed by the content. Peter thinks the extent to which young people really do get absorbed by the content depends less on their cognitive abilities than on their emotional maturity. He also wants to investigate if there's any difference between boys and girls in terms of ‘transportation'.
The ‘transportation', he expects, subsequently influences how young people perceive sexual prototypes and norms, and how they assess their own vulnerability to the risks involved with sex (‘I don't need a condom, because I know I'm going to be safe'). Those factors, in turn, determine 'willingness', which can lead to sexually risky behaviour. 'By that we mean whether or not young people can imagine ever finding themselves in a sexually risky situation,' explains Peter. He wants to test the different steps in this process through experiments and a longitudinal questionnaire amongst a representative sample of young people.
‘Let's first investigate exactly how, under what circumstances, and amongst which young people attitudes and behaviour actually change. And let's certainly avoid any moral panic.'
Author: Esther van Bochove, FMG Communication department
Source: FMG Communication department
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