I found an article today in The Sydney Morning Herald titled ‘the downside: alert as infection rates soar’. It is a brief article filled with statistics on sexual intercourse in teenagers and how they are on the rise. The whole article being very straight out and dull, telling us nothing we didn’t already know. Although the final few paragraphs do bring up a point almost leading to the direction of how to fix this issue. ‘”Young people are becoming more experimental with their sexuality and they don’t see the barriers to it now that we did in previous years as it’s more acceptable in the community now,” Ms Michealson said. The readily availability of pornography and representations of teen and adult sexuality in advertising and popular culture could negatively influence the way children and teenages view sex, she said. “Young people who are not informed or ready for sex education are being inundated with messages encouraging sexual behaviour that they are not ready to process and do not understand the consequences of.”
This statement is one step away from the best way to fix this issue and start sex education at younger ages. Something I believe should have been done a long time ago, and don’t understand why it was not. It has been recognised that advertising and media play a big factor in the lowering age of children becoming involved in sexual activity, it is also recognised that those who aren’t informed don’t understand the consequences. This leaves us with two solutions, remove sex scenes or anything sexual what so ever from every movie, the internet, TV show and ads. Sexuality being one of the major features for ad’s, with profiteering soaring, in this money driven world I doubt sexual references will ever be banned within the advertising industry. This leaves one other option, start sex ed at an earlier age, I’m constantly hearing of year 7 students at my school ‘getting around’ with an array of people in ages up to 20, pretty messed up if you ask me. As far as I remember year 6 sexual education is sugar coated cartoons of ‘what’s happening to me’ and a brief mention of actual sex in the form of ‘where did I come from’s’ and it’s for grown up’s who love each other. What’s that going to do for someone when they leave the sugar coated world of primary school and enter high school. A 13 year old girl gets to high school and an older guy shows some interest in her, all of a sudden she is cool cause she is ‘in’ with older kids, young, impressionable girl is going to go a long with what is supposed to be cool, and what does she know of the risks of diseases, pregnancy and everything else sex brings? Nothing other than old wives tales that her friends older sibling who also hasn’t reached the time of sex ed that actually educates you, tells her.
I recently attended a sexual health presentation only showed to senior high school students filled with graphic images and extensive information on STI’s. Something that made the whole room cringe and many swear to abstinence. With most likely about 50%+ of the people in that room already sexually active it was scary how many questions were asked and how much new information was given. I suggest they show presentations like this to age groups as young as year 7, as isn’t it better for them to make their own informed decisions, than with no knowledge or understanding of what their getting into by become sexually active.
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