Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant at age 16. Jamie is the star of Nickelodeon’s most popular show, Zoey 101. She doesn’t know if she’ll be returning after the pregnancy. The father of the baby is Casey Aldridge, age 19. Why should I care about Jamie Lynn Spears? Because this media coverage and the way we’re reacting to it sheds light on the average American.
For once, can we put things into perspective? Thousands of people are gossiping and ridiculing a girl they’ve never met. Early introduction to pop culture has fueled an on going fascination with watching the celebrities we grew up with crash and burn. The turn of the 21st century brought reality television and 24 hours news broadcasting. What seems like harmless coverage over celebrity culture is subconsciously training us on how we can or should live. PsyBlog posted an interesting article about secret attitude changes simply by the environment and information humans are exposed to.
The SADD reports that there are 750,000 teen pregnancies a year in the United States. These pregnancies cost the U.S. an annual 7 billion dollars. Abstinence education no longer has a lasting effect on teens. The increase in teen pregnancy is the result of media fascination and removing religion from the public school system without replacing it with ethics education1. It’s hypocritical that the average American declares that sex ed doesn’t belong in school, but encourages/allows their child to look up to the celebrities in Teen People. Teaching our children to admire people like Lindsey Lohan, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, or Jessica Simpson devalues the importance education. After all, none of these young women completed high school.
If you think this has nothing to do with you, then you’re wrong. If you teach a whole generation to not care about consequences or education you end up with 1 in 3 high schoolers droping out of school, 52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. younger than 252, nineteen million new STD infections each year almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 243, and an estimated 232 young people with AIDS that died in 2004 alone4.
Is this really what we’re shaping the future into?
Footnotes
1. To alleviate my comments of religious fanatics, let me remind you that Jamie met Casey at church. They began dating when she was thirteen.
2. Source “52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions; Teenagers obtain 20% and girls under 15 account for 1.2%.”
3. Source “Nineteen (19) million new STD infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.”
4. Source “An estimated 232 young people with AIDS died in 2004.”
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:56 am
I agree that the fuss being made about it is shocking - do American parents really think that Britney, Lindsey Lohan etc are good role models? If I was a parent, I’d be pointing my kids towards celebs who seem to have a bit more going for them than partying and looking pretty. Take Natalie Portman, for example - who has a university degree, supports environmental causes and several charities, along with being an award-winning actress and beautiful woman. (I just read about her in a magazine, heh)
I also hate the hypocrisy of people who complain about teenage pregnancy, yet don’t want their kids learning about it in school - sure it should also be the parents’ responsibility, but not all kids take their parents as seriously as one might think.
Those figures are pretty shocking - I didn’t know things had got that bad. Great post.
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Seriously, I agree with Beth. I think it’s stupid that she’s pregnant, but not any more than I would think if it was my neighbor or some other random sixteen-year-old. It’s just another teenage pregnancy. I don’t know anyone who looks up to the Spears’, who thinks “I want to be just like Britney.” These aren’t role models. They’re not even people to look up to.
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I completely agree with your post. The only reason that everyone knows about Jamie’s pregnancy is because of the media; to me, she’s just another teenager, and she’s just like any other teenager in America, so what’s the big deal? I really don’t care about the deal that much since I’ve never met her and I probably never will. I’m still a teenager and I certainly don’t admire Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, or Avril Lavigne, I definitely don’t want to be like any of them either. My role models are average everyday people that have made a good life for themselves. Anyway, great post, the statistics were shocking, but interesting to read nevertheless.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
i don’t understand why, in the age of logic, people are actually still delusional enough to look up to ‘celebrities’. seriously, go read a book and talk to your kids. it’s that fucking simple.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Secretly I’m afraid of ever having a daughter.
52%? I didn’t know it could be that much. I heard in some parts of China abortion is used as a form of birth control. Abstinence doesn’t work. And when teens do have sex they don’t use protection because they were never taught to do so.
December 31st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
If parents don’t want sex ed to be taught in schools then they need to assume the role of sex educator. It’s really only the religious groups that are pushing for “abstinence only” education in schools.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
It sounds nuts that anyone would want to take sex education out of school, especially since my parents didn’t want to talk to me about sex even when I asked about it, and I imagine that other people have had his experience also. For a long time I didn’t even know what sex was, which was pretty embarrassing when we finally started talking about it in school. I actually used to think that I could get pregnant from French kissing. LOL. Yeah, I was pretty confused.