LODNON – A recent study suggests that television shows like *Empire*link, *Sex Education*link) and *13 ReasonsWhy* link could be encouragingteenagers to drink alcohol, have sex and smoke.
According to *Mail Online*link,youngsters exposed to combinations of “risky” behaviour in the media thatthey watch are more likely to engage in similar behaviour themselves.
A team of scientists found that scenes only depicting one risky behaviour,such as sex on its own, were not enough to influence the attitudes of youngpeople.
Combinations of a number of risky behaviours – such as drinking leading tosex – were found to lead to teenagers viewing these behaviours morepositively, however.
“The purpose of this study was to determine whether media effectsassociated with exposure to multiple risk behaviours in television contenthave specific or more general effects on attitudes and norms associatedwith performing these behaviours,” the authors wrote in the paper.
“A brief exposure to combined risk behaviours in media may increasepositive attitudes related to the combination behaviour [alcohol and sex],a component behaviour [alcohol], and also moregeneral [smoking].”
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More than 300 young people, aged 14 to 17, were involved in the study byresearchers from the University of Pennsylvania.
Experts asked teenagers to watch four categories of clips from the TV show*Empire* to make their findings.
This included scenes featuring either alcohol and sex, sex only, alcoholonly, and those showing no risky behaviours.
Exposure to multiple risky behaviours was also found to make teens morelikely to engage in other risky behaviours they hadn’t seen – such assmoking.
