Changing Habits

If the attitudes of our young people toward sex are going to change, either the media must change or the listening and viewing habits of young people must change. While we have been permissively silent, the media of our culture has been telling our children that you find intimacy through sex and that casual sex and free love are valid expressions. As a result, most of our young people have developed their concept of sexuality from the media’s message without realizing that premarital sex comes with a staggering price tag of broken hearts and broken lives.

Before placing all the blame on the media, however, we must examine our role in this problem as parents, teachers, pastors and youth leaders. Many of us share in the blame because of our permissiveness. Often we regard television as a harmless “electronic baby-sitter.” We send our young people off to the local multiplex theater without reading up on the movies they are going to see. We turn our kids loose on the computer without monitoring the sexually explicit websites that can be accessed with only a click of the mouse. We have to be more diligent.