A study just published in the medical journal The Lancet has surprised locals and strangers. It was about verifying the results of a sex education campaign consisting of adolescent girls from some 2,000 Australian schools, between thirteen and fifteen years old, taking home a doll from the Realityworks company for a weekend , who give their all the work, annoyances and headaches of a real creature: they erupt, they cry inconsolably, they have to be changed diapers, cradled … Similar programs are carried out in other countries such as the United States, where they are implemented in 67% of schools .
Well, the results of the subsequent follow-up show that the idea, with all its good intentions, had been counterproductive: while 17% of the girls who took care of a “cyber baby” became pregnant before reaching the age of twenty, the percentage decreased up to 11% among those who did not participate in the experience .
Opinion on abortion also varied significantly: only 54% of the adolescents who lived with the doll would resort to it, while among the rest, 60% of those surveyed were inclined to interrupt the pregnancy if it occurred.
As Dr. Sally Brinkman of the Telethon Kids Institute (the Australian research center that conducted the study) has said, although some of the girls locked the electronic child in the garden shed or tried to turn it off by all means, most did not she wanted to get rid of him .
