Last week, the new episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit involved a group of high school girls who decided to get pregnant together. Sound familiar? I thought so. Even though some of the details differ from the Gloucester, MA, news story (the girls in the show attend a Catholic prep school in Manhattan, and there is a murder involved), the plot and its characters ooze with real-life references.

Fidelia, one of the pregnant girls, made a promise with her boyfriend to abstain from sex until marriage (hello Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus). But then Fidelia, channeling Jamie Lynne Spears, gets pregnant, only this time it’s with another guy’s baby.

“It rocks, huh? We’re totally gonna be the hottest MILFs on the block,” she says to Detective Olivia Benson, who stares back at her in disbelief. “A baby is not an accessory,” Benson replies. “It is not a bracelet or a pair of earrings or a slammin’ pair of jeans. . . Do you know the odds of a teen mom finishing high school? Forget college or any other dream that you might have. Life as you know it is over now.”

Fidelia’s pregnant friend offers a scary and arguably obvious reaction: “What’s the big deal? That Vice President lady’s daughter is gonna have a baby, why can’t we?”

Law & Order is known for its “ripped from the headlines” episodes, but you can find controversial news stories and cultural issues all over TV dramas these days. Have you seen any? Write and let me know.

Some recent articles to read:

Here’s why social networking sites—and the entire Internet in general—may not be such a bad thing for your teen.

Click here

Here’s more on the TV sensation “Twilight,” which is based on the bestselling series “The Twilight Saga”—and which the New York Times calls “a deeply sincere, outright goofy vampire romance for the hot-not-to-trot abstinence set.”

Click here

Here’s what Healthy Living thinks your teenage should know about sex. Sound familiar?

Click here

Last Friday, Tyra Banks shared findings from a study her show conducted on the social and sexual experiences of 10,000 young women.

Among the findings:

* On average, girls are losing their virginity at 15 years of age.
* 14 percent of teens who are having sex say they’re doing it at school.
* 52 percent of survey respondents say they do not use protection when having sex.
* One in three says she fears having a sexually transmitted disease.
* 24 percent of teens with STDs say they still have unprotected sex.

Tyra was evidently surprised by these datapoints. Not surprisingly, I’m not. What Tyra’s show found mirrored what Abigail and I uncovered reporting and writing Restless Virgins. Doesn’t this comment, which Tyra later made to Matt Lauer on the Today show, sound familiar?

“[Teens] are not talking to their parents; they’re embarrassed to talk to their parents,” Banks said. “And more than them being embarrassed to talk to their parents, their parents are embarrassed to talk to them. So they’re finding all [about] sex education with their friends, with their peers.”

Tyra’s findings strengthen the message we’ve been trying to get out for the past 14 months since our book first came out: many kids are engaging in risky behavior, and many parents are sitting by, passively. It’s wonderful that Tyra is taking this issue to heart, and using her popular tv show to broadcast the issue. But more than sounding the alarm she - and we - need to do something.

There’s no one answer - it’s hard to talk about sex! - and certainly we’ve put forth many ideas here. But we need more. So if you have one you want to share, please email us.

Last week, Mariah Carey announced that she and her new husband, Nick Cannon, waited to have sex until marriage. Whether or not you believe her is hardly the point. Carey joins a growing list of Hollywood celebs (think: Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers) who are publicizing their decisions to wait. Granted, most of these stars are teenagers (Carey is in her late thirties and on her second marriage; it’s a safe bet she’s not a virgin), but this public pursuit of purity has gotten a lot of attention.

The Jonas Brothers’ may be fully committed to abstinence, but their performances are, ironically, all about sex. Case in point: the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. There the boys are, singing on stage, arching their backs, enticing a crowd of screaming females. We’re supposed to think that their performance is not sexual because they wear purity rings, but in front of the band is a crowd of girls who watch, cry, and shriek with gyrating hips. It’s basically one big hypothetical orgasm, sans contact.

Will the virginity pledges work? Last year, the Washington Post reported that a congressional study determined that abstinence-only education does not stop teens from having sex, nor does it increase or decrease the likelihood that a teenager will use condoms. But “American Idol” winner Jordan Sparks thinks such pledges are legit. After MTV VMA host Russell Brand mocked the Jonas Brothers for their purity, Sparks famously said, “I just have one thing to say about promise rings. It’s not bad to wear a promise ring, because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut.”

The misconception is, of course, obvious; having sex and hooking up in high school doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a slut.

What teens watch and do on television - and the computer - have a lasting impact on their behavior. Last week, Abigail wrote about a study linking sexual content on TV with teenage pregnancy. Well, this week it’s all about linking violent video games - like Halo, a video game popular with the boys in our book, and Halo 2 and 3, games popular today - with violent behavior. Teens are what they see, it seems.

A new study out this month in Pediatrics reveals that when tweens and teens are exposed to violent behavior in video games, they tend to become violent and aggressive themselves. Researchers conducted the study on teens in Japan and the United States over a school year, and concluded that across cultures, “playing violent video games is a significant risk factor for later physically aggressive behavior.”

Halo is just one series in a crowded market of violent games. Thought it’s rated M (for Mature, because of its blood, gore, mild language, and violence) and “may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older,” there’s little blocking a younger teen from accessing the game, and then imitating it later on.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this. It’s a straight forward case of monkey see, monkey do. We can’t expect that teens will instinctively know that what they see is not what they should do. So we need to be mindful of what media they’re exposed to, and continue talking with them about it, too.

Teens who watch television with more sexual content are twice as likely to experience a pregnancy as teens who watch less sexual content, a new Rand Corporation study reports.

The news comes during a year that witnessed the pregnancies of high profile teenagers Jamie Lynne Spears and Bristol Palin - who no doubt play into the media’s focus on sex, or at least its potential consequences - not to mention the 18 teens in Gloucester, MA. A few years ago, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that sex scenes on television doubled between 1998 and 2005, with primetime television shows averaging nearly 6 sexual scenes per hour. That was before Gossip Girl and the new 90210.

The Rand researchers advocate for exactly what Marissa and I have been suggesting ever since Restless Virgins came out last fall: Parents must talk with their children. So watch Gossip Girl, the Real World, and all the other shows that showcase or romanticize sex. It may be impossible to control what your teen watches on YouTube or downloads off of iTunes, but parents CAN be there for their children. If they aren’t, these TV shows will be.

One final thought: On October 27, the Candies Foundation ran a full-page ad in the New York Times about teenage pregnancy, which began, in large white and pink letters, “AMERICA, WAKE-UP! WE HAVE AN EPIDEMIC!” Take a look below, and talk about it with your teens:

Highlights