You’ve heard of many reasons, I’m sure, why indoor tanning—with its links to possible melanoma cancer—is something to avoid. Well, it looks like researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found some strange corollaries that may further encourage people, especially young people, to say boo to the booth. They found that “using indoor tanning devices was linked to binge drinking, having sex and using unsafe methods to control weight among high school students.”
According to a Reuters article, the researchers were working with data collected from high schoolers in grades nine through 12 who were asked about their health and related behaviors. They found that:
• Female students were more likely to report using indoor tanning devices than males
• Both male and female students who reported indoor tanning were also more likely to binge drink, have sex and use unhealthy methods to control their weight
• Among girls, illegal drug use and having had sex with four or more partners were also more likely among those who used indoor tanning
• Guy tanners were more prone to steroid use and smoking daily
• Attempted suicide was more common among that group, too
• And oddly enough, students who tanned were also more likely to play on sports teams and to eat vegetables.
Now, if you look at that bullet-point list just a bit, a pattern seems to rise out of the ashes of that smoking tanning bed. No, it’s not that UV rays will suddenly make you want to run out, take drugs and have rampant sex. It’s that these activities seem to all be about “looking good” and “partying hard.”
That’s the point that detractors of the study’s claims have been pointing out. Several blogs and articles I spotted online pooh-poohed the waste of taxpayer dollars on what they considered to be “really stupid studies.” And essentially their arguments boiled down to the idea that, hey, kids were getting drunk and having sex long before tanning beds popped up. Which, of course, is true.
If you take that logic one more step, though, there’s a greater truth that can be applied to this CDC study. And that’s the fact that while there is indeed a link in all those connected risky behaviors, logic would suggest that it’s not a tanning booth that’s driving kids to sex, drugs and brown leathery skin. It’s our culture.
Our American, Internet-connected, fast and furious culture, and the media that informs it, is constantly telling everybody that you’ve gotta be slim, tan and sexually desirable. The super-thin Photoshopped beauties with golden skin and perfect smiles that grace every magazine cover seem to say it. The iTunes tracks that rhythmically entice us with the joys of chiseled beauty and hot, drug-laced sex, hum it. And the TV shows and movies that show us exactly what tanned and tucked perfection should look like, flash the message before our eyes with luminescent glory.
All of those media fronts scream the message that you must do whatever’s necessary to fit their templates if you want to be as happy as you should be. Tanning beds, then, seem to be just one of those expected “necessaries.”
So, is it as simple as ban tanning beds (and vegetables)? Is that the answer to the risky teen actions? Well, some might say so and I’m sure the discussions will continue. But I’m of the mind that encouraging moms and dads would be a far more productive choice. They’re the ones who can make the big difference here when they get involved in the lives of their teens and help them make safe decisions about their health.
Of course, that’s the sort of study I’d like to see a little more of.
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