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David Weigel | August 7, 2006

Any story headlined "Sexual Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex" is bound to fall short of expectations, and Lindsey Tanner's does. A new study in Pediatrics doesn't conclude that teens' iPods are having the same stimulatory effects as vibrators. Rather,

Listening to music with degrading sexual lyrics is related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents, whereas this does not seem to be true of other sexual lyrics. This result is consistent with sexual-script theory and suggests that cultural messages about expected sexual behavior among males and females may underlie the effect.

The researchers also suggest that "reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content could help delay the onset of sexual behavior." So when you next see Joe Lieberman some moralistic senator-to-be-determined demanding parental blocks on iTunes to stop the plague of underaged pregnancies and rainbow parties, here's what they're quoting.