On Sept. 30, I was doing my usual scroll through my Facebook newsfeed on my phone when something one of my friends had shared caught my eye. An article with the title, MTV begins production on a new show ‘12 and Pregnant.’ The scary thing is that I really wasn’t that shocked but more intrigued. I mean, I didn’t even know where babies came from when I was 12.
The article was posted on July 15 by Empire News which is known by some to be a satirical news website. This was the first time I had heard anything about this article and it was shared a number of times on my feed in the past week. I brought it up in one of my classes and another student agreed to seeing it as well. I may have had a small feeling that this might not be true, but for the most part I believed it and I wasn’t the only one.
Tessla-rae Bomberry left this comment on Empire News’ Website in response to the satirical article. “You’re assuming that everyone knows this website and what it puts out to the public,” she said. “There is no indication that this article is satire besides the website itself: but most people aren’t surfing the website…This is a pretty believable article to be honest, and it almost had me until I realized who posted it. In this day and age, I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of show actually happened, and apparently lots of other people are in the same boat.”
We can’t really blame the website for posting an article about something that isn’t really happening because it does seek to create content filled with satire in order to entertain its readers rather than to inform them, according to Empire’s website. However, what is more disturbing is that people are not questioning the actual concept of such a show, even though it isn’t true, but is “believable” because of shows like “16 and Pregnant” that are already out there and are very popular. This whole incident says horrible things about our entertainment culture today and the people that are a part of it. It is seriously disturbing to see the obsession with such outrageous shows.
What I wonder about shows like this is if they glamorize the lives of these young girls with kids or do they work as a form of birth control dissuading people from getting pregnant young? I think the answer is both. For some it makes having kids young look appealing because it got these girls onto a TV show, but for others the struggle and hurt that the girls face on the show brings the realization of how important it is to wait.
A study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that shows like “16 and Pregnant” did help to reduce teenage pregnancy in America by 5.7 percent in the 18 months following the shows release. Melissa Kearney of the University of Maryland and Phillip Levine of Wellesley College were the two authors of the study; they tracked Google searches about the show and birth control, along with Tweets, all of which were very high when the show went out, according to economist.com.
It is hard to say if whether this decrease is solely because of the show or if better understanding of STD’s and methods of contraception being introduced had a factor as well, which they probably did. I, however, am one of the girls that these shows serve as a warning for. I see the lives of those girls, and my feelings about prevention are reinforced once again.
I worry for the other side of this argument in which shows like this glamorize teen pregnancy. For girls that see it that way it becomes a sort of example and not a good one.
Most girls who become pregnant as a teenager do not graduate from high school. In fact, only about 50 percent of teen mothers will receive a high school diploma by the time they turn 22, compared to 90 percent of women who do not become pregnant, according to cdc.gov.
Another shocking fact is that the children of teenage mothers are more likely to struggle in school and possibly drop out, have a number of health issues, become pregnant as a teen and deal with unemployment as a young adult, according to cdc.gov. It affects both parties in a negative way.
The good news is that teen pregnancy rates are dropping. In the year 2012, we saw a 6 percent decrease in the number of pregnant teens from the year 2011. We don’t know for sure what may be causing this decrease; it might be more girls on birth control or it might be shows like “16 and Pregnant” that are discouraging ladies from going down that path before they are truly ready.
The article Empire News posted about MTV supposedly producing a show about pregnant 12 year olds should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Shows like this are out there already and are going on multiple seasons. A show about pregnant 12 year olds is outrageous, but a show about pregnant 16 year olds is not much better. It really is disappointing that for a show to be popular today it has to straddle the line between what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.
Caitlin Malone can be reached at caitlin.malone@spartans.ut.edu