Young Teens and Violent Movies -- Not in My House

It becomes more and more apparent to me that the only person I can trust to protect the content of movies that are seen in my home is me.

A recent study from the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth College finds a surprising number of young teenagers watching extremely violent movies.

James Sargent, the lead author of the study and Professor of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School said, "through movies, adolescents are being esposed to brutal and often sexualized violence."

The survey revealed that the most popular movies from a list of 50 of the most violent films released from 1988 to 1999 were randomly selected from the top 600 box office films. These movies, all R-rated, and not meant to be seen by children contained scenes depicting such family friendly activities as sadistic rape, sodomy, brutal or ritualistic murders and cannibalism. On average, these movies were seen by 28 percent of the sample. In other words, walk into an American public school class of 5th graders and nearly one in three of them has watched a brutal rape and accepts murder as an entertaining plot device. Ask them why they liked these films, if they admit to seeing them and their answer will be, "They're cool."

The top movies for fifth graders, who are usually about 10 years old, were "I Know What you Did Last Summer" and "Scream," with both movies seen by more than 40 percent of the fifth graders surveyed. R-rated films are supposed to be restricted for people under the age of 17.

Two other R movies, "The General's Daughter" and "Natural Born Killers," were also seen by a surprising number of children.

"The General's Daughter," which contained graphic and violent rape scenes, was seen by 27 percent of the sample of more than 5000 children.

"Natural Born Killers," portraying young lovers on a killing spree mixed with sex, was seen by 20 percent of the study group.

It was especially interesting to me that the authors of the survey said their "results suggest that better oversight of movie industry marketing practices might be warranted."

Oh, really?

If you're own children watch violent movies you will see changes in their behavior. If your children do not watch violent movies, they still must interact with other children who do and because of repeated exposure to violence by those children your children are impacted as well.

Another note:

Dr. Sargent is the author of another interesting study that indicates adolescents whose favorite movie stars smoke on-screen are more likely to be smokers themselves. If you think that children who see people smoke in movies are not affected as to whether they smoke later in life, then you are wrong.

It's time to wake up and smell the smoke and put out the fires.