Social Learning & Teen Pregnancy

Today, I’ll be explaining social learning and the effects it has on teen pregnancy rates.

The social learning theory states that people learn behaviors by observing others. For example, a study by Albert Bandura demonstrated that children imitate violent behaviors that they learn by watching adults perform them. In today’s society, the glamorization of teen pregnancy in media may be encouraging teenage girls to have children themselves.

Researchers have proven that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV are twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20. During the pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears, birth control is never mentioned. Dealing with pregnancy is often taken lightly by the media; the film Juno, while otherwise being very straightforward about risks in having sex, takes the issue of giving children up for adoption lightly, making it seem like a simple solution without taking note of the emotional impact it has on teen mothers. Media that features teen pregnancy often opt for happy endings, such as the couple staying together to raise the child, when in fact this rarely is the case in real life. Teenage women who watch these sort of films make the connection that there are few negative consequences of getting pregnant, and through social learning become a statistic by imitating these behaviors.

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