US teens often watch extremely violent movies
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A telephone survey of 6,522 teens, between 10 and 14 years of age, reveals that, overall, up to 48 percent have watched a movie with extreme graphic violence. However, in certain subgroups, such as black males, rates over 80 percent were seen.
Concerns have been raised about the harmful effects of exposure to violent media, Dr. Keilah A. Worth and colleagues note in the journal Pediatrics, yet data regarding the occurrence of such exposure among teens is lacking.
In the new study, Worth, from Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, assessed exposure to 40 movies that were rated R for violence by the Motion Picture Association of America, UK 18 by the British Board of Film Classification, and were determined to have extreme violence by trained content coders.
The percentage of teens who watched violent movies ranged from 1.93 percent for the film “The Corrupter” to 48.1 percent for “Scary Movie”. At the national level, the researchers calculate that over 10 million children have seen “Scary Movie”, including 1 million 10-year-olds.
Boys were more likely than girls to watch violent movies. Older age, non-white race, having less-educated parents, and doing poorly in school also identified teens that were more likely to have watched such movies.
Black males were especially likely to have watched violent movies. For example, the movie “Training Day” was seen by 81.0 percent of black male adolescents compared with just 27.3 percent of teens in the overall study group.
When surveyed, frequent watchers of violent movies were more likely than infrequent watchers to report having a television in their bedrooms and to have parents that permitted them to watch R-rated movies.
The widespread exposure to violent movies among teens “raises important questions about the effectiveness of the current movie-rating system,” Worth and colleagues contend.
It also suggests, they say, that pediatricians “ought to play a bigger role in motivating and teaching parents to impose restrictions on their use to reduce exposure, because many parents may not be aware of the violent level of content of these movies and the high level of exposure.”
SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.
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