Published: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Teenage smoking linked to movies
The likelihood that an adolescent will become addicted to cigarettes increases with every smoking scene he or she sees in movies, new research indicates.
The finding, reported in the September issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, suggests that programs such as Smoke Free Movies, which ask studios to reduce depictions of smoking in films aimed at minors, deserve more support, the researchers say.
Previous studies have found that youngsters who watch movies that show smoking are more likely to try a cigarette for the first time. Half of all high school seniors say they have tried a cigarette and 7 percent are daily smokers of half a pack or more.
And little is known about what factors make the difference between those who do not get hooked and those who do.
Susanne Tanski and James Sargent of Dartmouth Medical School and their co-authors counted the number of smoking scenes in 532 box-office hits over the past five years. Then they surveyed by telephone 6,522 adolescents ages 10 to 14 about which of those movies they had seen, as well as their smoking habits. They resurveyed the youngsters eight, 16 and 24 months later.
The team found a direct correlation between the number of smoking scenes watched and the chances of becoming a habitual smoker: Children who had seen the most scenes were twice as likely to end up addicted as those who had seen the fewest.
The link was not affected by social and economic factors, nor a link between smoking and the total number of movies watched, strengthening the case that smoking scenes per se are to blame.
The finding, reported in the September issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, suggests that programs such as Smoke Free Movies, which ask studios to reduce depictions of smoking in films aimed at minors, deserve more support, the researchers say.
Previous studies have found that youngsters who watch movies that show smoking are more likely to try a cigarette for the first time. Half of all high school seniors say they have tried a cigarette and 7 percent are daily smokers of half a pack or more.
And little is known about what factors make the difference between those who do not get hooked and those who do.
Susanne Tanski and James Sargent of Dartmouth Medical School and their co-authors counted the number of smoking scenes in 532 box-office hits over the past five years. Then they surveyed by telephone 6,522 adolescents ages 10 to 14 about which of those movies they had seen, as well as their smoking habits. They resurveyed the youngsters eight, 16 and 24 months later.
The team found a direct correlation between the number of smoking scenes watched and the chances of becoming a habitual smoker: Children who had seen the most scenes were twice as likely to end up addicted as those who had seen the fewest.
The link was not affected by social and economic factors, nor a link between smoking and the total number of movies watched, strengthening the case that smoking scenes per se are to blame.
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