Dr Paul Allen

Researchers have concluded that for every hour of exposure to sexual content in movies , teens were more than five times more likely to lose their virginity within six years. "Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners , and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners," said Dr. Ross O'Hara, who led the study, which focused on 1,228 children ages 12 to 14, with follow-ups conducted six years later. "This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages." O'Hara went on to report that while more than half of adolescents use movies and the media as their "greatest source of sexual information," many could not differentiate between what they saw on a screen and what they confronted in real life. Nearly 700 of the highest grossing movies released bet...

Image via Wikipedia For years, the entertainment industry has laughed off warnings from Christians and others about the link between depictions of sex, violence, and nihilism in the media and what happens in the real world. They dismiss critics like you and me by saying young people make their own choices and can clearly distinguish between what they see on screen with what goes on in their own lives. But common sense, experience, and studies show this isn’t necessarily the case. For instance, news outlets for years have voluntarily adhered to strict reporting standards concerning suicide, because the evidence of copycat suicides is so clear and uncontroversial. One academic stu dy spoke of “the need to actively restrain reporting of suicides to decrease the imitation effect.” Well, what about when suicide is dramatized on television or the silver screen? Here, the evidence has been less clear, but according to a new report by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of ...

Image via Wikipedia There is an embarrassing, unfortunate moment in  “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”  that reveals what is perhaps the most troubling aspect of this critically reviled, audience-beloved franchise. As a few characters are getting a tour of a collection of vintage automobiles, the collector ( Patrick Dempsey ) points out, in a drooling tone, the seductive curves and lines of the vehicles.  Meanwhile, the camera ignores the cars completely and instead slowly pans up the body of the series’ new, designated babe ( Rosie Huntington-Whiteley ). Herein lies the real problem with the “ Transformers ” movies . It’s not the idiocy of the plots. It’s not the incompetence of the action sequences. It’s not the increasingly brutal violence. It’s the sexism . As that scene makes all too clear, series director  Michael Bay  can barely distinguish between a woman and a vehicle. This has been the case for all of the movies (in the second installment, a villa...