Because I Said So

Do You Want Smoke With That Movie?

by Danielle Wood

PG or G? Comedy or drama? If you’re like most parents with an elementary aged child, you ask yourself a few questions before plunking down cash for a set of movie tickets. Well there’s one more you need to add to your list: smoking or non-smoking.

As if we parents didn’t have enough to worry about. A new study by a team from Dartmouth Medical School found that young kids who watch smoking on-screen are much more likely to become smokers down the road.

True, we’ve known for a while that on-screen smoking can egg teens on when it comes to real-life experimentation. But this is the first time a study has shown that exposure to on-screen smoking in elementary school, years before kids hit puberty, can affect whether they light up later in life.

Okay, you’re probably telling yourself, but it was a small sample, right? Sorry to say, not. The research team surveyed more than 2,200 kids ranging from age 9 to 12, who had never tried smoking. They gave kids a list of 50 of the 550 top box office movies from the past 5-½ years and made note of which ones they’d seen. Then they checked in with the kids a year later, and then two years later, with an updated list of another 50 top-rated movies.

On average, each child had seen 37 of the 150 movies they were asked about. But on average, in those 37 movies, they’d seen a whopping 150 smoking occurrences. By the third interview, one in ten kids had begun smoking. And, to cut a long story short, the research showed a clear link: lots of movies with smoking on-screen at an early age equals much more likely to pick up the habit as kids drift toward the teen years.

Weirdest of all? About 80% of the movies kids watched that had smoking in them were rated okay for kids… some were even G-rated.

Egads! Can’t a parent sit down for a little cinematic pleasure without worrying about those seemingly innocent cartoons coming back to haunt them? Apparently not. When it comes to teen smoking, movies may just be a smoking gun.

So pass the popcorn. But not before passing on kids’ movies with cigarettes. Get the picture? (And Hollywood, shame on you.)



 
 

Danielle Wood is the Director of Editorial for Education.com. You can reach her at editorial@education.com

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