That’s the question du jour this week, it seems.

Headlines from The Washington Post, ABC News, and People, among others, talk about Miley Cyrus’ comments about sex and violence in entertainment, questioning why one seems to get more attention than the other.

Great questions, Miley. We’re glad you brought that up.

Our long-standing mission at the Parents Television Council has been to combat sex, violence, and profanity on TV and in entertainment and bring about public awareness of those issues because of the long-term harmful effects they can have on children.

So is the graphic sex worse than graphic violence, or is the graphic violence worse than the graphic sex? The reality is that both can be harmful to children. Social and medical science confirms what most parents instinctively know to be true: children who consume explicit entertainment content — both sexual imagery and violent imagery — can be negatively impacted. Justifying one by pointing to the other is deceptive at best, and toxic to the mental and physical health of children at worst.

We are especially concerned about the harmful effects that sexualized media can have on young girls, and created a campaign, “4 Every Girl,” to address this problem.

Just two years ago, our own research found that underage female characters on primetime broadcast television are more likely to be presented in sexually exploitative scenes than adult women.

That’s unacceptable.

Source: http://w2.parentstv.org/blog