TV as Birth Control? The Surprising Role of MTV’s ’16 and Pregnant’ in Reducing Teenage Births

You’ve probably already heard that reality TV is corrupting the youth. Critics decry that it’s not particularly intellectually stimulating, it glamorizes oversexed and drunken subjects, and it gives young people a distorted view of the world. But what if putting someone on TV cultivates more of a deterrent for behavior among youth than a desire to emulate?

A new study from The National Bureau of Economic Research by Melissa S. Kearney and Philip B. Levine posits just that, with a look at the popular MTV reality TV show 16 and Pregnant. Through an econometric analysis of Google trends, tweets, Nielsen ratings, and birth data, they make the bold assertion that 16 and Pregnant and its accompanying series directly caused a 5.7% decrease in teen births since the series’ premiere in 2009.

16 and Pregnant and its spinoff series Teen Mom show decidedly unglamorous looks at the effects of pregnancy and teen motherhood. They follow teenage mothers throughout their pregnancies and through early years of their children’s lives, depicting the financial hardship, struggle to finish school, adverse health effects, and often-rocky relationships characteristic of teen parenting. In their observations, the authors of the study note that mothers on the show, like many in similar situations, are mostly ambivalent about their pregnancies and their infants and often cite a lack of birth control as the reason for their pregnancy.

Some have criticized the TV show for popularizing teen pregnancy. Many have theorized that it encourages teenagers to become pregnant and thus be featured on the show; the frequent appearance of its popular subjects in tabloids and celebrity news media might support that claim. However, Kearney and Levine’s research empirically shows that 16 and Pregnant does precisely the opposite, with causal evidence to suggest that these series are responsible for nearly a third of the decline in the US teenage birth rate from 2008-2012.

Many factors, including better education on birth control methods and work with teens on the effects of pregnancy, could contribute to this decline. The authors highlight the high unemployment rate in particular, which has been shown to have a strong association with a lower rate of teen pregnancy. Kearney and Levine controlled for the unemployment rate and other factors in their analysis of the data, strengthening their claim that 16 and Pregnant had a causal effect on the reduction in teen pregnancy.

In their study, the authors first used Twitter, Google analytics, and Nielsen ratings to find areas where teens had a high level of exposure to the show. In addition to demographic information and an indication of a TV show’s popularity, Nielsen ratings also analyze exposure in geographic areas. Kearney and Levine next examined Twitter and Google search analytics to determine whether or not there was an increase in search queries for topics related to pregnancy prevention, like “how to get birth control pills,” around airings of 16 and Pregnant in areas where they knew teens had a high exposure to the show. They found a significant increase in birth control-related searches around new episodes of the show. Finally, the authors examined whether places where more teens were exposed to the show had different teenage birth rates, controlling for factors that might cause different pregnancy rates among geographic areas besides exposure to the show.

Since the impact on teen pregnancy after viewing the show is unlikely to be immediate (it takes time to get birth control, pregnancies can only happen once a month, etc.), the authors looked at the number of teen births nine months after the “sweeps” airings of the show. Their analysis showed a significant decrease in teen births in geographic areas with a high Nielsen rating for 16 and Pregnant.

Although this paper has been singled out as a significant study, some researchers, including the authors, stress its limits. In asserting causality, the researchers make the assumption that “there’s no reason to think that places where more people are watching more MTV in June 2009, would start seeing an excess rate of decline in the teen birthrate, but for the change in what they were watching.”

This study has struck a chord with many because of its assertion that images in the popular media have a causal effect on social behavior. While some may argue that nothing good can come of reality TV, it seems that 16 and Pregnant has captured a vulnerable audience and inspired searches that may alter behavior. MTV has an undeniable knack for capturing and relating to a teenage audience in all its programming, and while replicating the effect of 16 and Pregnant on other policy areas may be infeasible, considering how to make these messages palatable to audiences is an observation worthy of consideration.

Article Source: Melissa S. Kearney and Philip B. Levine, “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 19795, January 2014.

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