The Saturation of Sex in Teen Media

Sex. We all know about it, in fact we’ve known about it for a long time. Why? The media that we consume is so flooded with sexual content. The fact of the matter is that sexual content is so readily available to the everyday viewer on multiple platforms. With today’s young tech-savvy audience, they’re being exposed to it at just a touch of a screen regardless of if they were actively searching for it. According to the American Psychological Association, the average age of one to be exposed to pornography or sexual content is 13 years old. But how? With the exclusion of pornography, how do teens subconsciously consume sexual content? Let’s take a look.

Teen movies. Classic timeless staples. You may remember a few popular films such as Superbad, Mean Girls, John Tucker Must Die, the list goes on. What do these movies have in common? At one point of the film, the movie focuses on sex by either getting revenge using sex and attempts at trying to have sex throughout its approximately 90 minute run time. While it acts as a theme, it diminishes the act of sex itself and its impact on the average teen. It doesn’t address safe sex or the emotional impacts of the act itself. The characters are aged 13-17 and discuss it in a trivial manner, thus influencing it’s audience, of 13-17 year olds, to believe that it is indeed trivial.

This can also be extended to television shows. Adolescents now have access to every series available with multiple streaming sites. Teenagers often view content aimed at them and would thus watch shows about high schoolers. A few examples include Riverdale, Gossip Girl (Reboot), and Elité. Similarly to the movies they consume, these shows, while marketed to teens, heavily contain sexual content; depicting teenagers having heavy, ‘passionate’, unprotected sex. Elité, however, is on another level as it even has themes of incest, which is it’s own level of weird, and a muslim hijabi woman taking off her hijab to have sex in the school bathroom, in addition to it’s already heavily-sexualised content.

It’s impressionable audience, who is uncomfortable in terms of speaking to their parents about sex, will view these as the benchmark, the blueprint for the teenage experience.

This can also prove to be detrimental to their bodies, in terms of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. According to National (American) Center for Health Statistics, “half of all newly reported STDs occur in young people between the ages of 15 and 24 and that nearly half of all sexually active high schoolers did not use condoms the last time they had sex.”

The idea of unrestricted sociosexuality can also be observed on social media. This can be seen through the normalisation of “dick appointments” where people make plans to hook up and leave right after. Some even go as far as to go into detail, how often they occur etc. As social media is unfiltered and uncensored (most of the time), teenagers will have access to this content and concept. If one has been restricted or forbidden to watch such content, they would still consume the notion of sex and it’s “pleasurable” effects online. This behaviour, is a result of the first two points, in which sex has oversaturated teen based content and has led them to believe that sex at a young age is normal.

Additionally, casual sex at a young age is often brought up in pop music as well. Take Wet Dreamz by J.Cole, a platinum hit single in which the artist talks about thinking and then losing his virginity to his highschool math classmate.

The fact is that the average Singaporean loses their virginity at 16. This could be due to the fact that they have been consuming such content since a young age and it has been ingrained in their young minds that casual, unprotected sex, is indeed part of the teenage experience.

To delve into my own experience, the over flooding of sexual content in the media I consumed led me to believe that I was supposed to be having sex as a teenager and because I wasn’t, I began to question if something was wrong with me; the way I looked, spoke, carried myself. It took its toll on my mental health and self-esteem for the longest time.

While I do believe in sexual liberation and that it's one’s own business what they choose to do sexually, I do believe that we are targeting this message a little too strongly to an audience who is still learning about their bodies, their feelings and so much more. Being a teenager is hard enough as it is, the pressure of having or not having sex will only make it worse for them if they have been conditioned to believe that it is an essential part of the growing process.

While, yes, it is important to teach teenagers about sex, maybe aim the sexual plotlines towards college students or people in their early twenties who have a little more of a grasp on life and their bodies.