Jane D. Brown, professor of journalism and mass communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a principal investigator on a five-year study of the media and teens' sexual health.

THE N&O: How do you define pornography?
JANE D. BROWN: I would say it is explicit portrayals of sexual behavior. It can be done artistically and beautifully, and it can be done with coercion. It can be done with violence, done with children, done with animals.

THE N&O: Has porn gone mainstream?

BROWN: Using that broad definition, we're seeing increasingly explicit portrayals of sexuality on television, in movies and in music videos and magazines. We've been analyzing the media that seventh- and eighth-graders in North Carolina attend to. There aren't a lot of depictions of sexual intercourse, but a remarkable frequency of nudity and exposure of body parts, and since clothing styles today are bare midriffs, we see lots of bellies, boobs and butts. As one 14-year-old girl we interviewed said, "It's in everything; it's all there is" in all kinds of media that they attend to.

THE N&O: What's the upshot?

BROWN: We don't know very well what the effects will be, but kids are increasingly interested in sexual content and sexuality . In one analysis, we found that girls who started puberty earlier than their age-mates -- that is, between 9 and 11 years old -- are more interested in sexual content than their less mature age-mates. We speculate that the media then become an important source of sexual information for these earlier maturing girls because nobody else in their lives is talking about it. Their friends aren't interested yet, or are less interested, the parents aren't thinking they need to be talking about it with them yet and the schools certainly aren't.

What's left are media full of sexual information. These kinds of portrayals used to be less accessible; you really had to go looking for them. Now they are increasingly mainstream content, on prime-time television, in the magazines they read and very accessible on the Internet. Now we have shows like "Dog Eat Dog" in prime time, which is basically strip poker. Sixty to 80 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders have a television in their own room, and many are hooked up to cable. They stay up late at night so they can see shows on channels like HBO that include information about how to give good oral sex and how to sleep with a prostitute. You can now even see the news presented by naked people.

THE N&O: What do we do about it?

BROWN: I'm especially concerned about our children who are growing up in this strangely sexualized culture with very few resources for living a healthier sexual life. We have constantly forbidden comprehensive sexual education in our schools, parents don't talk with their children about sex except to say don't do it and churches are still reluctant to talk about it. We need to encourage parents to talk about it, then we need to change what we're doing in the schools and in the churches. Then we need to help our kids use media in the healthiest ways possible.

This leads me closer to wanting censorship than anything else, but I would rather we persuade and perhaps pressure the media industry to take responsibility and to remember that they are the parents of children who are growing up in this culture.

THE N&O: What kind of pressure?

BROWN: First, you educate the population to be selective and then to praise the media when they see content they like, and when they see content they don't like, they tell the media. Some groups also are working with Hollywood writers and producers to embed sexually responsible messages on shows . "Dawson's Creek" had some long-running themes about responsible sexual behavior, and feedback showed fans identified with the characters and were learning about sexual norms .

Parents need to start early in modeling responsible media use and setting up households so kids can make responsible decisions about how they're using media. Don't have the TV in your child's bedroom. Your computer should be in a place where you can monitor your child's use. Use the V-chip. Negotiate limited media time. The recommendations are that kids under 2 shouldn't watch TV at all, and only one to two hours a day after that. Kids are watching four to six hours a day, and if you put all media together, they're attending to media six to nine hours a day. It's a huge issue.

THE N&O: What happens later on to young people who have been exposed to sexual images so early?

BROWN: All these 12- to 13-year-olds know about oral sex, anal sex, bestiality and group sex. If these are your first impressions of what a sexual relationship is about, it's going to be difficult to engage in a loving, long-term relationship that includes fidelity. We know from studies of exposure to harder core porn that the expectation of having a faithful relationship is diminished significantly. It can set up very unrealistic expectations of what sex means, of what relationships are. Love and the use of protection against disease or pregnancy are missing in all this.

THE N&O: Is there an upside ?

BROWN: The media could be quite a wonderful educator about sexuality, if it were more humane and realistic. "Dawson's Creek" was in the right direction. Young adolescents were dealing with real issues, like how to have a boyfriend or girlfriend; how to negotiate those relationships; when to introduce sex; how to protect against getting an STD or getting pregnant; how to decide to wait; how having sex affects your popularity and so on. Those depictions could be helpful for teens who have few other resources to turn to.

Most sexual behavior in the real world is in the context of a relationship, or at least we might hope it is, and so sex is often more about communication and negotiation and establishing trust with another person. Increasingly today it is or should also be about understanding emotional and physical consequences. That's what I'd like to see more of.

Courtesy of The News & Observer