A new study (NYT) suggests that MTV’s 16 and Pregnant may have prevented as many as 20,000 teen births in 2010 alone. Ben Richmond elaborates:
Is this really all that surprising? For much of the 80s and 90s, we all heard about MTV’s unstoppable ability to influence the young, but most of the time the people talking about that influence were right-wing religious groups who said that MTV would lead children straight to hell. Even these shows about teenage mothers were accused of glamorizing and therefore encouraging adolescents to have kids.
But, as the study’s author Melissa S. Kearney pointed out in a piece at the Huffington Post, the economists found that, even though the birth rate had been dropping steady for two decades, there was “notable evidence that the introduction of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant is responsible for a significant portion of the reduction in the teen birth rate in recent years.” The researchers looked to see whether larger reductions in the teen birth rate were occurring where more people were watching the show. They focused on changes in birth rates in places after the show went on the air and also looked at MTV’s ratings once it was introduced. They also looked at Twitter and Google trends, and found that tweets and searches about birth control and abortion spiked when the show was on, specifically in locations where it is more popular. It seems teen pregnancy isn’t that glamorous after all, even when it’s on MTV.
Aaron Carroll examines the paper:
Recognizing that this is not a randomized controlled trial, please don’t take any of this as proven “causal”. Nevertheless, the results are worth thinking about.
The show is popular, and tons of teens watched it and tweeted about it. But there was an associated increase in tweets and searches for things like “birth control” and “abortion”. This held true even in the third analysis.
Moreover, the authors found that the teen birth rate was 5.7% lower than expected because of the show. That’s about a third of the total decline in birth rates from June 2009 to the end of 2010. There was no increase in abortions, either, so it appears that the show is associated with a reduction in pregnancy, not an increase of terminated pregnancies.
I still won’t watch the show. But maybe I should stop judging others who do so harshly.
Jessica Grose points to another study, which finds that viewers of teen-mom shows develop incorrect impressions about teenage pregnancy – such as “teen moms earn a lot of money and that the fathers of their children are highly involved”:
Though superficially, the two sets of findings don’t seem to gel, when you look more closely, what may be happening is a reality TV phenomenon that affects all reality shows after their first seasons: The stars become famous. The first study, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, only looked at data from 2009 to 2010, the first year and a half after 16 and Pregnant hit TV screens. Back then, the depiction of teen moms—their financial and relationship struggles—was much more realistic, because there was no sense that getting on the show was a golden ticket to tabloid fame. “Imagine bein’ in prison. That’s what [motherhood is] like, bein’ in prison,” Jenelle, one of the featured moms on 16 and Pregnant said in 2010. No wonder viewers weren’t eager to replicate that experience.
Nicholas Tufnell provides more details on the second study:
The authors of the research are worried that as reality television becomes more prevalent, it will be increasingly difficult for younger audiences to differentiate between what is and isn’t real, perhaps not realising that most of the scenes are scripted and that the “stars” are frequently paid tens of thousands of dollars. It is estimated that the stars of Teen Mom receive more than $60,000 (£36,000) a year, a stark contrast to the $6,500 (£3,960) that is actually earned annually by many teen mothers in the first 15 years of parenthood.
The Dish 