The Medias Dirty Little Secrets Media, Advertising,...

The media plays an increasing role in any young person’s life, but it is especially important to teens in their high school years. Research has demonstrated that teenagers â€Å"voice concerns and attitudes that echo themes common in media messages, and that they behave in ways that reflect media content† (Feldman 245). The concern is that the sexually suggestive media is the reason for the increase of sexual activity among high school teens. The media messages that are known to increase a teenagers’ sexual behavior come from all different angles, such as sexually explicit music lyrics to the â€Å"sex sells† philosophy of countless main stream commercials. â€Å"Teens typically spend about 6 to 8 hours of their time awake [each day] with some type of†¦show more content†¦Teenagers claim that they learn a lot of information from the movies they watch, especially since those films help teens experience new situations, travel to foreign places, and present issues that are important to them. The downside is that there is an increase of movies depicting sexual activity at an early age as a common act. So why the concern of sex appeal in movies, if they are only movies? The hit film Juno went as far as showing teenage pregnancy as not only bearable but attractive, so as the â€Å"reviews of Juno appeared, [that] very same week the newspaper headlines announced [the first] rise in the teenage birth rate ... in a decade and a half† (Hulbert). There are other movies that even goes as far as idolizing sexual relations, such as the teen favorite Mean Girls, which takes the viewer into the life of the typical popular high school girl clique. The film not only has sexual related content in practically every scene, but the music used in the movie is sexually suggestive as well. Music becomes quite popular for teens as it can be used for various social activities and even in helping to control their moods. The Research and Development Corporation, or RAND Corporation, â€Å"conducted a study that showed that teens who listen to a lot of sexually explicit degrading lyrics are twice as likely to begin having sex sooner than