Movies Breed Teen Smokers

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Charlotte E. Grayson Mathis, MD

Dec. 14, 2001 -- That hot new movie has a PG rating, so you figure no harm will come from letting your child see it. But according to a new study, it could lead your kid down the road toward an unhealthy -- and potentially deadly -- habit.

Adolescents are inundated with images of smokers -- friends, family, people they admire -- and smoking by teens' favorite film stars has been linked with teen smoking. Until now, however, no one had tested whether images of smoking in movies affects kids' smoking habits.

Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School looked at over 4,900 children aged 9 to 15. Each child was shown a list of 50 randomly-selected popular movies and asked which ones they'd seen. The number of smoking images was tallied for each movie.

The typical adolescent had seen 17 of the 50 movies. On average, they'd been exposed to 91 smoking episodes in films.

The researchers found that, even after taking peer pressure into account, kids exposed to the most smoking in movies were most likely to have ever smoked. More than 31% of the kids who'd seen over 150 smoking images in movies had smoked, compared with only 5% of kids who'd seen between 0 and 50 smoking images in movies.

The study results appear in the Dec. 15 issue of the British Medical Journal.

A recent survey found that American adolescents watch an average of three movies a week, according to the researchers. In this study, they found that films generally contain five smoking episodes. Since this accounts for about 15 exposures to smoking a week, your child may be exposed to more smoking in movies than in real life.

The movie industry has questioned whether viewing smoking actually influences behavior, but this study lends support for those wanting to limit smoking in movies.

Your child will likely see smoking in movies. You can use this as another opportunity to get your anti-smoking message through. And just earlier this month, these same researchers showed that children are less likely to smoke if their parents voice strong disapproval.

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