Influence of Home Video on Sexuality Aspirations of Secondary School Students in Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

Home videos are entertainment media but their use by adolescents transcends leisure to sexuality aspirations. A survey of 180 students in selected secondary schools in Ibadan showed that viewing influenced their sexuality knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP). The paper argues that exposure to home movies affect young people’s life aspirations as higher viewership (95.6 percent) corresponds with high negative sexuality response (93.3 percent). Accordingly, the media teach 87 percent of students about girl-friend/boy-friend relationships, expose 82 percent to sexual relationships, arouse 85 percent and encourage premarital sex among 53 percent students. While entertaining, the media provide information that teenagers use to construct their sexuality, having far reaching health implications. Home video content and packaging thus place adolescent lives on a reproductive health disaster. This calls for alternative models of entertainment communication as well as critical censorship of home movies to help checkmate worsening sexual and reproductive health conditions in Nigeria.