Is TV Ruining Your Sex Life?

I have been writing abstractly about sex a little too much lately, I promise to slow my roll or get more graphic next week.

Have you noticed that a lot of studies are being done regarding sex and television? Not that I was alive then but I'm pretty sure that the TV has been blamed for virtually every problem since its creation. Kids getting fat? Blame the tube. Lagging behind the Asian countries in test scores? That's on you, Spongebob. Not having enough sex? Boycott Sony.

A study conducted by Pediatrics linked teen pregnancy to watching racy TV shows. And we're not talking about NASCAR or Chappelle's Show. The study shows that teens watching Sex And The City and a couple other programs were more likely to have sex and get full of babies. First of all, that is a serious chicken or egg question (by the way: per Yahoo some credible scientists are reasonably convinced it was the egg, fascinating). A few hundred years ago we could probably link teen pregnancy the invention of the novel. Old Jane Eyre had some things in common with Carrie Bradshaw. And Juno was feeling Hester Prynne. Pop culture a agent of moral corruption, them damn cave kids really started getting a smart mouth on 'em when they found colored chalk, but let's talk about the actual, Raster-projecting electronic idol.

I'm not able to find any data on this but I've been told that couples with TVs in their bedrooms have less sex. I know a number of people that refuse the boob tube in favor of actual boobs. One of the great things about living in NYC is the huge immigrant population. Many of the ones freshly to the city work in various capacities in the service industry. If I have a long cab ride, I in variably start with the questions. Off the bat (because I'm an idiot), I like to let them know A) I speak a limited amount of Spanish, B) I know that the surname Singh almost always means someone is a Sikh and/ or Punjabi, C) Toussaint was somehow involved in the Haitian Revolution or D) all of the above. They humor me. But when I get into their business, it turns out that a lot of these dudes have a ton of kids. And more often than not, the rationale is they didn't have TV back in the home country. And possibly a lack of birth control.

To back this up to some degree, a study conducted by Springer (via TVByTheNumbers.com) shows that generally happy people watch less TV than generally unhappy people. The happy folks watched 48 minutes less TV per day than the unhappy ones. And these shiny souls weren't just whistling "Dixie," they had sex an additional 10 times (per year, per day would be some sort of record) than the morose opposite numbers. This may explain why Two And A Half Men is so popular. We also find that people totally lie (even in anonymity) about their TV habits, which is the only reason that those police procedurals are the highest rated shows on television.

So, does TV lead to less sex and more depression? Or does less sex begat depression and plasma screen worship? Almost to prove a point, a survey in UK polled men and revealed that a majority of them would abstain from sex for 6 months for a 50-inch plasma TV. Yeah yeah, no sex please, we're English but there is only so much Masterpiece Theatre and soccer that they can watch, right?

One of our other bloggers already solved this problem with the suggestion of moderation. I think moderation is for suckers, feel free to multitask. The Bloodhound Gang suggests doing it "doggy style, so we can both watch X-Files." David Duchovny is at full-mast just thinking abou it.