Dr. Bar-on also recommends confirming that parents know what their children are watching and seeing in the media. A media history form available from the AAP Media Matters campaign can be completed by parents or adolescents in the waiting room to help expedite the process. Although teen-agers rank school sex education programs as their leading source of information about sex, recent reports indicate that the increasing number of sex education programs are not comprehensive enough, according to Dr. Strasburger. In fact, the AAP Policy Statement now recommends that pediatricians encourage schools to add a media education component to current sex education programs or to create media education programs. According to the policy statement, media can have a positive influence on children and families by promoting responsible and healthy sexual behavior by adults and adolescents.
Pediatricians can have a huge impact on the local level.
The American public needs to move beyond its hysteria that talking about birth control will lead to increased sexual activity. The policy statement also recommends encouraging movie theater owners and video store owners to enforce movie ratings and supporting further research into the impact of sexual content in the media. Although the effects of media exposure on children and adolescents have been identified as a public health issue, a majority of pediatric residents do not receive training in this area. Members of the AAP Committee on Public Education, Michael Rich, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, and Miriam Bar-on, M.D., FAAP, uncovered these findings in a recent survey. Rich and Bar-on discovered that only 58 of the 204 responding programs offered education on one or more medium.