Traipsing around school and town with a crying, hungry baby doll doesn’t seem to be enough to deter teens from conceiving children, according to a study recently published in the journal The Lancet. Rather, the study’s authors found that teenage girls who carried one of the electronic dolls, typically used for a school assignment, actually were more likely to become pregnant.

The results stem from a three-year study of girls in Australia ages 13 to 15 in dozens of schools. Each school administered a pregnancy prevention program for the girls. Some schools hosted a virtual infant parenting program that assigned girls to care for a baby doll with lifelike needs to give them an idea of the challenges of parenting. The remaining schools provided a more traditional program. In total, about 2,900 young women took part in these programs.

Researchers kept tabs on the participating girls’ medical records until they turned 20. It turned out that those who had to carry around a doll for the virtual parenting program actually were more likely than the other students to experience a teen pregnancy.

Their risk of teenage pregnancy was about twice as high, as determined by records of births or induced abortions, jumping from 4 percent to 8 percent. Although these numbers are still low, the increase in the risk was noticeable.

There are few studies on pregnancy prevention programs, but the study’s authors name two that also show downsides of virtual infant parenting programs. Negatives included higher rates of teenage girls desiring to get pregnant, and also that the girls enjoyed the attention the fake babies brought them.

The research showed that many of the teens carrying around the dolls seemed to have missed the intended lesson that being pregnant at a young age is not child’s play.