It is amazing to me that research institutions often spend millions of dollars to prove what most of us intuitively know. When it comes to the media, often they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to discover what most mothers already know.

That was the case with the studies published many years ago in the Journal of Pediatrics. The researchers concluded that watching sexual content on television affected subsequent behavior. They found that teenagers who watched lots of sexual images were more likely to be involved sexually. And they also documented that teenage girls who viewed lots of sexual images were more likely to be pregnant.

The latest study looked at the impact of sexual content in the movies. Once again they concluded that “exposure to sexual content in popular movies predicts sexual behavior in adolescence.” That makes sense. Lots of studies have already demonstrated that teenagers who watch more risky behaviors in popular movies, like smoking or drinking, are more likely to smoke or drink. This latest research merely looked at the impact of watching sexual images in the movies.

The researchers surveyed the 684 top grossing movies from 1998 to 2004. They coded the movies for sexual content. By the way, I might mention that there was a high percentage in all the movies regardless of their rating. That was a bit of a surprise to me.

They then recruited 1,228 participants who were 12 to 14-years-old. Then they collected data on the movies they watched and checked back with them six years later to see when they became sexually active and how risky their sexual behavior might have been.

They found that teenagers “who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners” and are less likely to practice so-called “safe sex.” But I guess most mothers could have predicted the results before they did the study.