Cultural differences in adolescent sexuality

After Thursday's class on adolescent sexuality, I decided to do some research on the cultural differences on sexuality, specifically among teens. By using summon through the TU library, I came across a very recent article that contained a lot of information on this topic. This is the link:

http://www.sciencedirect.com.libproxy.temple.edu/science/article/pii/S1083318811002312


You may have to type in your TU portal information to get to the link. The thing that interested me most about this article was that its main point seemed to conclude that cultural boundaries and differences in sexuality are diminishing to a more uniform sexual culture among teens. It also discusses in the article that the media is a primary factor in this,
"Despite cultural traditions that are peculiar to different societies there is a growing globalization of sexuality and sexual behavior among teenagers, changes that are rapidly coalescing cultural responses to a primarily generational effect rather than the more traditional adherence to local cultural heritage. Electronic and digital sharing and merger is explored further below and appears to be developing into the most important influencing factor affecting future adolescent sexual behaviors.

Digitalization and technology mean that cultural isolation is less likely to occur and teenagers are exposed to information and influence in ways that would not have been dreamed of previously. The speed of change is particularly rapid as evidenced by the effects of social networking on recent political events such as in the Middle East. There is an increasing presence of sexuality on the internet, with the development of intimacy, the association of texts with sexual scripts, the emergence of cybersexuality as a sexual space midway between fantasy and action, and the question of boundaries and the location of the person in sexual interaction.¹⁶ An unpublished survey of teenage cell phone owners aged 12–17 years showed that as many as 15% had received a sexually explicit text (or sext) with 4% admitting to having sent sexts themselves."

The article goes on to further discuss media influence, among other very interesting factors within contemporary teenage sexuality. There are a lot of important and interesting topics in this article worthy of discussion, please tell me what you think of it and if you agree or disagree with the article.

Joshua Russo