Final Post: Sex and health in teens today & Reflections

With media playing such an important role in the lives of today’s teens, it is no wonder that many of the messages about teen sexuality come directly from the media they consume. The various form of media such as print media, electronic media and new age media has created devastating impact in society by portraying "sex" as a casual phenomenon and not something that one shloud abstain till marriage, particulary among the teenagers. Hence, teenagers now a days do not view sex as a taboo and hence leading to many unhealthy sexual activity in the world today.
Lets take online gaming (virtual world games) as one example, although it does develop creativity and help in spatial abilities in children, The iconography is very sexualized and the women who lure players into the games often sport lusty cleavage. Hence males may have a mindset that it is alright to lust for women and engage in unhealthy sexual relationship when they have the urge to. They are shaped by this form of media to lust and to think that they are in the virtual world.
The media's messages are impossible to avoid -- it is embedded in everything from reality TV to movies (virtually every R-rated movie aimed at teens has included at least one nude scene and, often, several sex scenes), to advertisements (over $300 million is spent each year on ads for erectile dysfunction drugs), to online and offline games and Facebook.
According to the latest Durex global sex survey, the average age of Singaporeans experiencing sex for the first time is 18.4. Considering that the average age of marriage is at least 10 years more, it's a safe assumption that a fair number of young people are engaging in pre-marital sex.

Kilbourne notes that sex in the media is often condemned "from a puritanical perspective—there’s too much of it, it’s too blatant, it will encourage kids to be promiscuous, etc." But, she concludes, sex in the media "has far more to do with trivializing sex than with promoting it. The problem is not that it is sinful but that it is synthetic and cynical. We are offered a pseudo-sexuality that makes it far more difficult to discover our own unique and authentic sexuality."