The Answer Sheet VALERIE STRAUSS

Blogging at voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet

A previous post from Valerie Strauss's education blog.

Several people have told me recently that if parents want their teenage girls to abstain from sex, they should make them listen to Taylor Swift's song "Fifteen" or read the wildly popular "Twilight" series.

Swift, for those who don't know, is a singing sensation who started in country music but is huge in the pop world, too. "Fifteen" is a call to girls to think before they jump into bed with the first guy who professes love, because he won't for long.

In the "Twilight" books, a teen named Bella falls in love with a vampire named Edward who refuses to have sex with her until they are married. He is more than a century old and, wouldn't you know it, an old-fashioned vampire.

I wondered about the reach of popular culture into the teen psyche, so I conducted a mini survey: I asked three people involved with sex education about it.

The first two were my teenage daughter Maddy and her friend Emily, who have had comprehensive sex education at school. They said they doubted that safe-sex songs, or "Twilight," would have a real effect on kids in the heat of the moment.

I also consulted Maureen Ellen Lyon, a clinical health psychologist at George Washington University who was president of an American Psychological Association committee that recommended comprehensive sex education in schools to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Do safe-sex messages from pop culture figures resonate with young people? For that matter, does the barrage of misogynist, sexist and violent lyrics on the radio have any real effect on mores?

Lyon said "there is no denying" that popular culture can affect teen behavior, but a more powerful force can be a child's parents. Peer norms (which can be affected by pop culture) matter, too. So does the kind of sex education a teen receives at school.

This issue arose in a recent article in The Washington Post. It said that D.C. public high school students who took part in focus groups on sexual health gave a thumbs down to the city's sex ed curriculum.

They don't feel comfortable, they said, talking to school nurses who are supposed to counsel them, and they don't like the Durex condoms that their schools distributed. (They said they preferred Trojan or Magnum.) Girls said they didn't want to carry condoms because they thought they would be called promiscuous.

It should be noted that the survey sample was so small that the findings could not be considered representative of the District's teen population. But it is not unreasonable to think these teens represent a good portion.

Meanwhile, the tug of war over whether and how to teach sex education in schools continues.

According to the Jacksonville Observer, Florida Democrats and a coalition of health advocacy groups are trying again to win approval in the legislature for comprehensive sex education in public schools.

Proponents of comprehensive sex ed have tried unsuccessfully for years to win state funding. Proponents hope the statistics will change some minds:

-- It is estimated that more than half of all new HIV infections occur before the age of 25.

-- Half of new infections are attributed to the 25 percent of people who don't know they are infected.

-- Research shows that one in five adolescents will have sex before the age of 15 and that most who continue to be sexually active do not use condoms consistently.

Lyon said that research has shown that comprehensive sex ed, when targeted to specific populations, can reduce risky behavior among teens, even those who are sexual active.

Sex education works best when it reaches kids before they start sexual activity, that is, before they turn 15.

Kids want to fit in and do what they think other kids are doing.

"If you think everybody is having sex, it's not true," Lyon said. "There is pressure to have sex, though. They are less concerned with hearing about the birds and the bees . . . but rather want to know how do you negotiate in the context of a relationship.

"A lot of what teens need to learn is how to say 'no' when they aren't ready," Lyon said.