When a code blue is issued at area hospitals, this typically alerts medical personnel that an individual is entering cardiac arrest.

Similarly, Rob Paugh believes the potentially dangerous messages portrayed to American teenagers through the media, warrants the attention of adults and his “Code Blue” presentation Thursday night at Bellefontaine High School detailed his concerns. He addressed parents and educators in an event sponsored by the Logan County Drug Free Youth Coalition and Family and Youth Initiatives.

Beginning with the topic of teen sex, Mr. Paugh provided a number of recent songs, including lyrics from as Britney Spears’ Circus, Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body and Lil Wayne’s Lollipop, and such TV shows as Gossip Girl and The Hills, where teenagers engaging in sexual activity is depicted as the norm. However, he said music artists and TV shows typically do not explain the consequences of this behavior.

“There were only two known STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) that the Class of 1968 could acquire,” Mr. Paugh said. “Now for the Class of 2008, there are 25-30 types of STDs, and for each of those types, there are hundreds of different strains.”

Accordingly, the speaker explained that there are about 19 million cases of STDs each year, and that 25 percent of these infections occur in individuals age 19 and younger. Although many types of STDs are preventable with condom use, genital human papillomavirus still can be contracted when using a condom.

Concerning drug and alcohol abuse, Mr. Paugh presented recent song lyrics from Pink, Kenny Chesney, Jay-Z and Katy Perry that explicitly mention being drunk or drug use. He then showed a video interview of a young woman whose entire body was burned beyond recognition when a drunk driver crashed into her vehicle.

“Many teens think that what they do at a party is private, but often their actions can affect so many other people,” he said.

Mr. Paugh offered examples of the prevalence of violence and suicide themes in music, movies and video games, noting that the weapons chosen by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in their Doom computer game were the same weapons they used to carry out the Columbine High School massacre.

“I didn’t realize that video games influence kids so much,” said Angie Hackley of Bellefontaine, who attended the seminar with her husband, Chris.

“When I was younger, Mario Brothers was the popular video game. They didn’t have these shooting games like they have now.”

Mr. Paugh presented several Web sites where parents can screen what their children are watching or listening to. They include: for movies — kidsinmind.com and screenit.com; for music — azlyrics.com; and Internet filters — bsafeonline.com and internetsafety.com.

Mr. and Mrs. Hackley said they plan to use some of these tools to keep an eye on their nine-year-old son.

“Monitoring these types of things starts when they are even younger than teenagers,” Mrs. Hackley said.