There is a widely held view that we are what we consume – not just food, but media fare as well. In fact, some believe that media consumption is central to identity formation. We are what we watch on TV, listen to on radio and read in newspapers and magazines.

Of course, for me, ‘TV’ extends beyond plain old TV to now include the computer screen, and I’m even beginning to stretch it to cell phone screens. Anyway, if consumption does indeed confer identity, then what are we consuming in Jamaica? And what of our identity?

To get some sense of this, adolescents were asked to indicate their top three favourite types of TV programmes. The results were interesting – our young people love to laugh. Overall their #1 favourite is cartoons, 20.8 per cent gave this as their first choice. Next in line were comedies with 13.9 per cent. So we see over one-third of our adolescents watching TV mainly to get a good laugh, assuming that cartoons are still mainly funny.

Music videos (10.5 per cent), action shows (9.6 per cent) and soaps (5.8 per cent) completed the list of top five. But since we love to list Top 10s, I’ll give you the next five in line. They are sports, tying with regular movies (4.5 per cent), reality shows and animated shows tie at 4.35 per cent, followed by news with a paltry 2.7 per cent.

Table 1 displays these findings from 441 adolescents ranging from 10 to 18 years of age.

Based on complaints levied against soap operas for portraying too much sex and focusing on extra-marital affairs and other types of risky practices, I was particularly interested in this programme genre. Although definitely not as high on the list of favourites as I had thought, I wondered which adolescents were watching soaps. What was their age profile? Were they mainly boys or girls? And how did this preference link into their perceptions about their performance in school? How did it link with sexual practices?

Of the 26 adolescents who named soap operas as their #1 favourite type of TV programme, 24 were girls. Next I examined those who said it was their second favourite. Here, of the 16 respondents, 14 were girls. I moved to those who named soaps as their #3 favourite and the pattern was repeated, eight girls and only one boy. Therefore, from a total of 51 adolescents who said soaps were either their first, second or third favourite programme, we see that a full 46, almost all of them (90 per cent), were girls.

Among adolescents, watching soap operas is seen as a ‘girl thing’. I suspect that as boys grow older they change from this belief, because when I was general manager of TVJ, I remember the excitement the ‘Bold Traveller’ created when we went into homes to see who was watching The Bold & the Beautiful. Many men were watching, many men admitted to watching and many men won prizes. Young boys still seeking to determine their identity, especially their sexual identity, are perhaps unlikely to watch or admit to watching any programme that is seen as ‘girly’.

A review of the age profile of those who named soaps as their first, second or third top programme revealed a mixed picture, but overall, 14 year olds stand out as the ones who most enjoyed them. Throughout this body of research study, the 14-year-old girls have consistently reflected responses which stand out, as is now the case with their relationship with soaps.

Sometimes these girls stand out from all other girls, but mostly they are different from boys their age.

Although most adolescents in the survey indicated that they were not sexually active, and it was mainly the older ones who were, I nevertheless explored whether or not there seemed to be any kind of relationship between watching soap operas and the sexual behaviours of those adolescents who most enjoyed them. I looked specifically at the number of sex partners these 51 soap lovers said they had ever had in their life.

Overall, about one-third of them (16) said they had had sex. This is similar to the percentage of all adolescents in the survey who admitted to having had sex. Of those who most enjoyed soaps and had had sex, half of them said it was with one person. Of the other half (eight adolescents), four had sex with two persons, two with three persons and two with more than four persons.

It is difficult to make any real sense of the situation as to which types of TV programmes may influence adolescents to have sex by looking at soap operas in isolation. A more meaningful exercise would be a comparative analysis with other programme genres to which our adolescents are exposed, like dancehall music videos.

That exercise will require some rigour and will have to be saved for another time. For now therefore, I’ll simply highlight the breakdown of the number of sexual partners for those adolescents for whom soap operas fall in their top three choices for programmes most enjoyed.

And what of identity issues in relation to soaps? I cross-referenced the adolescents who listed soap operas as their #1 programme choice with those who would like to look like the women they see in their favourite music videos. This was the question which most directly related to identity. Two-thirds of them who loved soaps most wanted to look like these women. Soap operas led the way among #1 favourite programmes in the percentage of adolescents who wanted to look like someone else.

Does this suggest that young girls who really enjoy watching soap operas more than any other type of TV programme are most at risk for being dissatisfied with their identity, at least that aspect related to physical appearance? While this is an intriguing question, its answer is beyond the scope of the research findings of this particular project. But it is questions such as these which we need to begin to explore as we ponder issues of identity and their relationship with our media consumption.

Marcia Forbes is a PhD candidate at the University of the West Indies and a former general manager of Television Jamaica

marciaforbes@hotmail.com