Teenage Confidential

This articles focuses on a sexual awareness pilot project in the United Kingdom, called the "Media Relate Project," developed with the cooperation of the editorial staff of several leading teen magazines in the United States. The project aims to use popular media directed at teenage girls in instructional settings for sexual education purposes. The magazines have long been attacked by religious and conservative groups for encouraging teens to commence sexual behaviour at an early age. The editors of those magazines are attempting to combat that perception by taking a more proactive role in sex education and pointing out the failings of many of the current practices.



The "love guru" of teen magazine Bliss receives more than 200 letters and emails a month from teenagers desperate for advice on relationships and sex. More than two-thirds of teenagers say television and teen magazines are a useful way to find out about love, sex and relationships, according to research carried out by the Institute of Education. Teachers are responding to these trends by attempting to channel the trust between the magazines and their adolescent readers. The Media Relate Project aims to encourage adolescents to consider the issues discussed in the magazines and in several soap opera episodes and then to debate them through role play and dialogue. It will also ask them to critically assess the advice been given by the magazines to the letters being written in.

The response from conservative and religious groups to this project has been one of outrage and disgust as they generally see the teen magazines as being part of the problem and as encouraging early onset of sexual behaviour. The editors respond by saying that, "We are absolutely not encouraging teenagers to become sexually active. On the contrary, as well as reiterating the legal age of consent, the majority of our sex 'emotional' features give young teenage girls the confidence to say no."