As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies — more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. [...] All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.

a sudden baby boom among students at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, which Time Magazine says is apparently no coincidence:

While MTV tries desperately to portray “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant” as simply day-in-the-life type shows, like glorified episodes of “True Life,” it is evident that these shows are every bit as preachy as “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” an ABC Family show that is just raging with pro-life messages and Christian value undertones.

While MTV’s tactic is meant to be a subliminal public service announcement, having the teen moms repeatedly talk about their inability to practice safe sex (with most girls blaming their boyfriends for not wanting to use condoms) and crying about how they just want to party like regular teens just makes the girls look like buffoons and exposes them for the naïve children they really are.

That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics created the Media Matters campaign more than a decade ago to promote awareness within the industry of how influential its TV shows and movies are to youngsters and to alert parents to the critical role they play in monitoring and mediating what their children watch.