TV wrestling linked to risky teen behavior

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Feb. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. teens who watch TV wrestling are up to six times more likely to engage in risky behaviors like fighting and unprotected sex.

Robert H. DuRant and colleagues of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., conducted a telephone survey of 2,300 young people, ages 16 to 20, across the United States. The survey found 22 percent of males and 14 percent of females said they had watched professional wrestling on television over the past two weeks.

The survey respondents who said they had tried to hurt someone with a weapon watched 67 percent more wrestling than those who had not tried to hurt anyone. Those who engaged in sex without birth control watched wrestling 42 percent more frequently than those who used birth control.

DuRant said although no cause-and-effect relationship can be implied, but "we can only conclude that as the frequency of watching wrestling increases or decreases, the health risk behavior associated also changes."

The study, published in the Southern Medical Journal, found for each one additional time watching wrestling over the past two weeks, the rates of violent/risky behaviors -- sex without birth control, fighting with a girlfriend or boyfriend, or threatening or harming someone with a weapon -- increased by up to 19 percent.