05:55 AM Jan 20, 2010, Today Newspaper
SINGAPORE - Contrary to popular belief, watching sex scenes on screen or listening to songs with sexual lyrics does not make teenagers here go out and have sex - at least, it's not a strong contributing factor.
Also not linked to premarital sex: How much factual knowledge one has about Aids or one's academic performance, a local study has found.
Rather, the strongest factor that seems to account for premarital sex in local male youth is pornography, and for young females it is a history of sexual abuse.
This is what researchers from the DSC Clinic, the National Healthcare Group, the National University of Singapore and the Singapore General Hospital found, after interviewing 500 sexually-active teenagers from the DSC clinic and 500 non-sexually active counterparts from a general practitioner clinic between 2006 and 2008.
This survey of teens aged 14 to 19 is the "first rigorous study" here on factors for premarital sex, said DSC's Head and Senior Consultant Tan Hiok Hee.
Among the sexually-active boys, about 95 per cent had watched pornography, compared to 79 per cent of those not sexually active.
And 22.5 per cent of sexually active girls had a history of sexual abuse, compared with 3 per cent of non-sexually active girls.
What's especially worrying: 43.6 per cent of the girls and 29.5 per cent of the boys said they did not intend to have sex - but were unable to control themselves, lacked skills to say no, or were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
"It's a real concern," said Singapore Children's Society director Carol Balhetchet of the findings.
"(Pornography) may promote aggressive sexual behaviour and violence to obtain what you want." And with sexually abused girls, "the language of love has been miscommunicated by someone they trust and respect".
So, what implications do the findings have for existing sex education programmes and approaches among Singapore's youth?
For one, the results point to the urgent need to identify the high-risk groups - such as sexually-abused girls - early on "for interventions on life skills and sex education", said researchers.
And beyond the obvious step of curbing access to porn - which Net-savvy teens are bound to find ways around, if they really want to view explicit material - parents and healthcare personnel need to talk openly with teens about sexuality, to "help (them) develop a more critical attitude towards pornography", said researchers.
Dr Balhetchet suggested counselling them on the dangers of what they are watching. But to what effect, when - as the study showed - knowing that Aids is incurable did not have any significant impact on teenagers' inclination to have sex?
TV characters deliver the message
That's where the facts-based approach of sexual education needs to be supplemented with more effective delivery.
The media, ironically, could be one answer. It has had little impact on teenagers' choice to have premarital sex, and this could be due to Singapore's ban on scenes of explicit sexual intercourse in public-access movies and TV shows, the study said.
But conversely, having characters with /Aids or sexually transmitted infections (STIs) portrayed in the media could help teenagers decide to say 'no'. Teens who heard of or watched such characters were about four times less likely to have premarital sex.
As such, researchers called for facts about HIV and STIs, together with life-skills education, to be "woven into television dramas to contextualise sexual risk, so teens can relate to it".
Said Dr Tan: "The advantage of story-telling is this additional ability to illustrate the ordeals a person has to go through and perhaps, this curbs teens' curiosity."
Dr Balhetchet believes further studies on secondary school students could improve sex education curriculum material. For instance, she feels it should focus on the "social and emotional components", beyond just the factual information.
For both genders, the study found that adolescents who had dropped out of school, drank alcohol, smoked and lived in low-cost housing were more like to have engaged in premarital sex.
Latest figures from the Ministry of Health showed the STI notification rate for those under the age of 20 had more than doubled - from 61 per 100,000 population in 2000, to 133 in 2008.
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Seven in 10 sexually active teenagers had viewed pornography. Their main sources were:
- Internet (59 per cent)
- Videos (19 per cent)
- Mobile phones (14 per cent)
- Magazines (8.1 per cent)
Why boys had sex:
- Curiosity (58 per cent)
- Love (37.1 per cent)
- Unable to control themselves (21.2 per cent)
Why girls had sex:
- Love (49.2 per cent)
- Curiosity (38.6 per cent)
- Do not know how to say no (20.3 per cent)
