Why do movies have these effects on adolescents? These researchers examined the role of a personality trait known as sensation-seeking. One of the great dangers of adolescence, is the predisposition for “sensation seeking” behavior. Between the ages of 10 and 15, the tendency to seek more novel and intense stimulation of all kinds peaks.

A new study links exposure to sexual content in movies at an early age to adolescents’ sexual behavior. Over six years, psychological scientists examined whether or not seeing sex on the big screen translates into sex in the real world for adolescents. Their findings, which are to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed not only that it did but also explained some of the reasons why.

Before recruiting participants for the study, Ross O’Hara, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, and his fellow researchers surveyed 684 top grossing movies from 1998 to 2004. They coded the movies for seconds of sexual content, like heavy kissing or sexual intercourse. This work built on a previous survey of movies from 1950 to 2006 that found that more than 84 percent of these movies contained sexual content, including 68 percent of the G-rated films, 82 percent of PG movies and 85 percent of PG-13 movies. Most of the recent films do not portray safe sex, with little mention of using contraception.

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