Talk with your kids about what you see together on TV, and don’t let it be their primary source of information for sex and relationships.

Watch what they're watching: Your kids should learn about sex from you, not from prime time TV.

05-11-09 RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Watch what your children watch, and you may keep them from having sex at an early age, finds a new study presented last week at the annual Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting.

THE DETAILS: The researchers surveyed the parents of 754 children when the kids were between 6 and 12 years of age and then again 6 years later when the kids were adolescents. The parents were asked to keep diaries of the TV programs and movies their children were exposed to over a certain period of time; during the second phase of the study, the teenagers were asked about their sexual relationships as well as their media consumption habits. Most of the programs both parents and teens reported watching aired during primetime, and programs were defined as adult-oriented if they contained adult situations or language relating to sexual innuendo and graphic violence. The researchers found that kids who watched adult-oriented TV and movies between the ages of 6 and 8 years were much more likely to start having sex during their preteen and early teen years. In fact, every hour that they watched adult programming while they were younger led to a 33 percent increase in the chances that they’d have sex by the time they were between 12 and 14 years old.

WHAT IT MEANS: Kids learn a lot from television programs, and parents need to talk to them about sex just as much as they need to limit TV time. “When children are 6, 8, 9, parents don’t talk about sex,” says Hernan Delgado, MD, a fellow in the Department of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston and lead author of the study. “But the issue does come up when they watch TV. If parents don’t address these issues with children, [kids] develop their ideas about what being an adult entails based on what the media provides as a reference.” He also points to surveys that have been performed since the ’70s finding that teenagers pretty consistently point to TV and movies as leading sources of information about sex and relationships.

But we can’t lay all the blame on television programs, he adds. “Peer pressure, social norms they learn at school, the age they start romantic relationships—all that plays a role,” he says. It’s just as important to talk to your kids about what’s going on in their lives as it is to monitor what they’re watching.

Here are a few ways to cut down on media’s influence on your children’s sex lives:

• Make TV a family affair. “Parents should actively monitor what their children watch,” says Dr. Delgado, “and not use television sets as babysitters.” He also says that it’s easier to talk about sex when it comes up while watching programs together.

• Make TV less of a presence in your home. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends keeping TV sets out of the bedroom and limiting screen time (whether TV, movies, video games, or computers) to an hour or two per day.

• Know what they’re watching. The older kids get, the more independence they want. If you can’t accompany your strong-willed teen or tweenager to every movie he wants to watch with his friends, read up on it beforehand. Common Sense Media provides ratings and reviews on all types of kid-oriented programming, from books to movies to video games.

• Don’t be shy. Sex is an uncomfortable topic for some parents, but the earlier you start to address it in age-appropriate ways, the more likely you are to be a better influence on your kids’ sexual behaviors than the latest summer blockbuster. Need some tips? Read 10 Easy Ways to Talk with Your Daughter about Sex on Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen.