Study: Rap Videos Effecting Young Girls

According to a new study, African American girls who spend more time watching rap videos than their peers are more likely to hit a teacher, have more than one sex partner, pick up an STD or be arrested. Dr. Edward W. Hook III of the University of Alabama in Birmingham monitored the behavior of 522 […]

According to a new study, African American girls

who spend more time watching rap videos than their peers are more likely to

hit a teacher, have more than one sex partner, pick up an STD or be arrested.

Dr. Edward W. Hook III of the University of Alabama

in Birmingham monitored the behavior of 522 African-American girls between the

ages 14 and 18. The girls spent over a year watching videos and then had their

behavior monitored.

Before calculating their results, the authors

considered other factors that could have influenced the girls’ behavior, such

as age, family, employment and parental monitoring.

The girls in the study showed higher rates of

dangerous and violent behavior, and over 38 percent picked up a new STD. The

study found that 12 percent had been arrested and 44 percent said that they

used drugs

Those who watched more videos than others were

more likely to be arrested, report multiple sexual partners and used more drugs

and alcohol.

"I think it’s a reasonable inference to

say that these things build on one another in a sort of spiral, circular fashion,"

Hook told the American Journal of Public Health.

Dr. Cheryl L. Keyes of the University of California,

Los Angeles, author of the book "Rap Music and Street Consciousness,"

said that the studies shouldn’t be based on just rap music.

" Looking only at a girl’s choice of music

ignores other important factors," Keyes said. "It just can’t exclusively

be just rap music videos. It sort of bothers me that they’re always reducing

it to rap music. It’s a much more complex picture of youth growing up in contemporary

America."