Psychologist Monique Ward, a leading researcher on how popular media shapes what adolescents believe, has found that teens who watch television for the purpose of companionship are more likely to see women as sexual objects, and the more time teens spend watching sexualized television, the more likely they are to engage in sexual behavior themselves. In sum, if parents aren’t present to raise their daughters, our sex-saturated media (which happens to profit from marketing racy content to tweens) will gladly do the job for them.
