16 and Pregnant does not glamourise teen pregnancy. How could it?

16 and Pregnant is an MTV show – a show that, as the title suggests, follows the lives of American teenage girls who are ‘facing unplanned pregnancies’. The programme – and its spin off shows, Teen Mom (1,2 and 3) – is one of the channel’s most popular documentary series; but it has also been dogged by accusations that it glamourises teen pregnancy. Even Kim Kardashian has had her say, writing on her blog, ‘girls, these are not people you should idolize’.

But a study released earlier this week shows that the programmes have actually had an inverse effect on the number of teenage births across the US. The research noted spikes in Twitter and Google searches for words such as ‘birth control’ in relation to when the programme was broadcast, and came to a conclusion that the show led to a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months after it first aired.