The Secret Life of the American Teenager was a popular show among my peers throughout middle school and part of high school. I can't remember now if my mom thought it was inappropriate, or if I just thought she would think that, but I never watched the show. That is, I never watched the show until this year, as a sophomore in college.
Wow am I glad that I didn't watch more than a few random episodes until now. I watched the entire series, start to finish, and asked myself why middle school students should have ever watched it. In the first episode, we find out that the main character Amy Juergens is pregnant as a freshman in high school. She actually got pregnant at band camp, before school even starts. In the very last episode, Amy is leaving her son and maybe-still-boyfriend Ricky so she can go to college across the country in New York.
While I applaud Amy for making her life work out, graduating high school and going to a good college and all that, I seriously do not see most of her life being realistic in any way. First off, before Amy even tells her parents that she is pregnant, she starts dating Ben Boykewich. Ben is a sweet guy who just wants to find his first love with Amy, who totally takes advantage of him during her pregnancy. The two even get fake IDs and get married so that they can be a family once the baby comes. Maybe the two of them really were in love, but it seems more than unfair to ask a new boyfriend to raise your unborn son with you, and in high school nonetheless.
Not far into the first season we learn that pretty much everybody at Grant High School is obsessed with sex. We meet Ricky Underwood and Adrian Lee who have a relationship based solely on sex, as sophomores in high school. Ricky of course, is the father of Amy's baby. We also meet Grace and Jack, an All-American couple. Grace is a cheerleader and Jack is the quarterback, plus they're both Christians who attend the church Jack's dad preaches at. Grace has promised her parents that she will not have sex until marriage, so Jack is totally obsessed with getting her in bed. Pretty soon, every other character in the show is focused on sleeping with one of the other characters.
If I would have watched this show in high school, I definitely would have been wondering how many of my friends were sexually active. Honestly, I found myself wondering that same thing of my friends now. In reality a limited number of my friends in high school and in college are sexually active. Don't get me wrong, I have friends that are, but it's just not as common as The Secret Life makes it seem.
So the problem with "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is that it shows a target audience of middle school and high school students a glamorous picture of teenagers getting in over their heads. From unplanned pregnancies to failing marriages, the kids on this show do not live realistic lives. This show paints a picture that makes all of these problems look like fun, like problems you'd want to have, when they really aren't fun at all.
