Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Watching movies turns teens into drunks; to fix it, let's create more R-rated movies

This is topic Watching movies turns teens into drunks; to fix it, let's create more R-rated movies in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=007300

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-15-2015, 01:32 PM:

To fight teen drinking, experts call for stricter movie ratings

By KAREN KAPLAN
April 13, 2015

Should a movie that depicts any type of drinking automatically earn an R rating from the Motion Picture Assn. of America? The authors of a new study argue that the answer should be yes – and that this would make teenagers less likely to binge-drink or use alcohol in other risky ways.

The study, published Monday by the journal Pediatrics, offers fresh support for the idea that teens who see drinking on the big screen are more likely to drink themselves.

Among a group of 5,163 15-year-olds from England, those who watched the most minutes of drinking on film were twice as likely to have alcohol-related problems as those who watched the fewest. They were also 2.4 times more likely to drink at least once a week and 70% more likely consume five or more drinks in a single day.

Different groups of researchers have made similar observations about adolescents in the United States, Germany and elsewhere. Although the link between movie drinking and teen drinking turns up again and again, none of these studies can prove that watching James Bond quaff a martini or seeing the cast of “The Hangover” down shots on the roof a Las Vegas hotel actually causes teenagers to drink more than they would otherwise.

But the new report strengthens the circumstantial case. That’s because researchers have been collecting data on the study volunteers since before they were born. They’ve also been tracking their families as part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. This allowed the study authors to control for a host of factors that might contribute to teen drinking, including the drinking habits of their parents and whether the kids had a history of behavioral problems or sensation-seeking behavior.

When the teens were 15, they answered a host of questions about their own relationship with alcohol. By this age, fully 86% had tried alcohol at least once and 21% were drinking on a weekly basis. What’s more, 47% acknowledging at least one episode of binge drinking and 43% admitted to at least one problem tied to drinking, such as letting it interfere with school or work, getting into trouble with the police or suffering withdrawal when going too long without a drink.

The study authors also tried to gauge the teens’ exposure to drinking in movies. Researchers had watched 366 popular movies and counted up the amount of time that drinking was depicted in each of them. The teens were presented with a random sample of 50 of these movies and asked whether they had seen them. All of the minutes of drinking in all of the movies seen by each kid were added together, and the average was 47.3 minutes.

The 25% of teens with the lowest exposure – less than 28 minutes in total – served as the baseline. Those in the group with the highest exposure had seen at least 64 minutes of drinking.

After controlling for a variety of demographic and other factors, the researchers found that the more minutes of drinking the teens had watched, the greater the odds of all kinds of alcohol use. Compared with teens in the lowest-exposure group, those with the highest exposure were 20% more likely to have had a drink at least once; 70% more likely to have a history of binge-drinking; twice as likely to have an alcohol-related problem; and 2.4 times more likely to be drinking at least once a week.

These correlations were found despite the relatively modest amount of big-screen drinking watched by English teens, the researchers noted. In the U.S. and Germany, for example, the average teen had seen about three hours’ worth of movie footage that involved drinking. However, the totals used in this study probably understate the true exposure of the English teens because they were asked only about 50 movies, not all of the movies – and TV shows – they’d actually seen.

To the extent that movies contribute to teen drinking, one remedy would be to eliminate all drinking in movies made for minors, the study authors wrote. That means any film with even a glass of wine or a can of beer would invoke an R rating from the MPAA (or the equivalent from the British Board of Film Classification).

It may sound extreme, but “this is justified because movie rating systems exist to protect children from seeing media that may adversely affect their behavior,” according to the study. “Adverse outcomes from alcohol use are a large societal public health problem.”

If the MPAA and BBFC were to follow the researchers’ advice, a lot of movies would get stricter ratings. A 2011 study in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that 72% of the top-grossing movies in the United Kingdom between 1989 and 2008 included scenes of drinking, but only 6% of them were rated for adults.

In the U.S., 83% of box office hits between 1998 and 2003 included alcohol, including 57% of movies rated G or PG, according to a 2008 study in the journal Addiction.

L.A. Times article

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 04-15-2015, 01:48 PM:

quote: LA Times
The study authors also tried to gauge the teens’ exposure to drinking in movies. Researchers had watched 366 popular movies and counted up the amount of time that drinking was depicted in each of them. The teens were presented with a random sample of 50 of these movies and asked whether they had seen them. All of the minutes of drinking in all of the movies seen by each kid were added together, and the average was 47.3 minutes.

The 25% of teens with the lowest exposure – less than 28 minutes in total – served as the baseline. Those in the group with the highest exposure had seen at least 64 minutes of drinking.

This is an example of using statistics like a drunk, pardon the pun, uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination...

This study could also show that teens who drink less tend to prefer movies with less drinking.

Effect does not equal cause, and the parameters of this study are too limited to draw any conclusions.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 04-15-2015, 02:34 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
It may sound extreme, but “this is justified because movie rating systems exist to protect children from seeing media that may adversely affect their behavior,” according to the study.

That may be true in England, which has an official government rating system. In the US the ratings are intended as a guide for parents as to the suitability of the film for their children.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-15-2015, 02:53 PM:

Didn't they try this with movies featuring characters' smoking a few years ago? Has there been any meaningful reduction in adolescents' smoking habits since this was done?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 04-15-2015, 05:16 PM:

Study finds blaming your own failure to raise your kids on somebody else is easy. News at eleven.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 04-15-2015, 05:44 PM:

Martin, the BBFC is not government; it is an independent organisation. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be the case that the licensing authority had the final say. Some films were refused a certificate by certain local authorities even where the BBFC had given it one, Last Temptation of Christ is one example which was banned from cinemas in some areas, while it was not unknown for a film to be shown as X(GLC) where X was the highest rated certificate at the time and GLC was the Greater London Council, which was the licensing authority for cinemas in this part of the world until abolished in the '80s.

I know things have changed somewhat in recent years with the BBFC rating things like VHS and DVD versions of films for home use, and more recently video games. These cannot be sold to persons below the age for which they have been rated. The rating systems for home and cinema use are slightly different, but it all gets rather complicated at that point.

The certificate that a film actually gets is sometimes effectively chosen by the producers. The BBFC can say something like 'As it stands it's a 15, but if you remove the last 14 frames of this scene and the last 2 seconds and 9 frames of that one it would be a 12a.' If the producers or distributors feel that the film would lose much of its intended audience at the higher rating they may be prepared to make the cuts necessary cuts to make the lower one.

I find BBFC ratings puzzling; some are considerably higher than I would expect, while others are lower.

As far as I remember, the age for drinking over there is 21; is a federal law, or does it very state by state? this already seems very high; it's 18 here. We do have excessive drinking here, Croydon where I am seems to be something of a national centre for moronic behaviour by drunken night clubbers, but they mainly seem to be older people, maybe around mid 20s or so. I seldom see drunk teenagers, and a recent report says that heavy drinking by teenagers has declined rapidly in recent years, with many not drinking alcohol at all. I don't know what to make of reports, they always seem to contradict each other, but this one did seem to reflect my experience.

My own drinking has hardly changed since my mid teens, a long time ago now, typically less than a half litre bottle about two or three times a year.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-15-2015, 05:56 PM:

quote: Stephen Furley
As far as I remember, the age for drinking over there is 21; is a federal law, or does it very state by state?

It is a state law, but the age-21 limit is "encouraged" by a federal law which reduces the amount of highway funding that is available to states with lower minimum drinking ages. The practical side is that all states now have 21 as their "drinking age," although there are a few exceptions for religious ceremonies and such. In the past, different states have had lower drinking ages (as low as 18).

Regardless of the law, enforcement tends to be lax, and alcohol use is common among minors, especially on or near college campuses. There are arguments that lowering the drinking age would reduce binge drinking and drunk driving, as adolescents would have a chance to become familiar with alcohol and its effects under more controlled circumstances.

In any case, I seriously doubt that movies have any effect on underage consumption of alcohol.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-15-2015, 06:04 PM:

The other problem with this is, where does it stop? Should ANY movie showing potentially dangerous behavior be restricted from kids viewing it?

Using this logic, the classic Home Alone movie would be rated R since it shows the hero kid engaging in all sorts of dangerous behavior.

I'm sure Disney will eventually put "101 Dalmatians" into the vault alongside "Song of the South" since it shows a character smoking prominently.

Before long it will be impossible to make a movie featuring people actually acting like people. We'll have nothing but superhero movies and cartoons.

Posted by Eric Hooper (Member # 1730) on 04-15-2015, 08:23 PM:

In that Facebook movie "Social Network", late teen/early 20 somethings were snorting cocaine off teenage girls breasts and it got a PG13 rating!!!???

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 04-16-2015, 05:11 AM:

My face is laughing at the idiotic conclusion of this totally bogus "study." So any depicting of murder in movies causes teens to binge murder?

There is always someone waiting in the wings, just itching to impose their regulatory morality on everyone else. It's an ego trip. Best thing to do is summarily ignore these morons and go about ones business, even if it's making movies where characters in the movie can be seen drinking.

And what really should be outlawed is the government handing out large sums of grant money to scam artists to do nonsensical "studies" and then write bullsheet conclusion "white papers" about it; it just encourages more scam artists to look for more grant hand-outs to do even more bs studies to prove more nonsense, and you just wind up with binge BSing.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 04-16-2015, 10:53 AM:

> So any depicting of murder in movies causes teens to binge murder?

There have been numerous studies of convicted violent criminals that show that they watched a lot of violent movies and/or played violent video games before and during their life of crime. The problem with all the studies of this ilk is two fold. First, they don't include anyone who is not a convicted criminal, so the control group is already skewed toward the known violent offender. Second, like the alcohol study, they cannot answer which is the cause and which is the effect.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 04-16-2015, 11:36 AM:

The return of Seduction of the Innocent, now with movies!

Seduction of the Innocent

And Stephen, I stand corrected

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-16-2015, 01:59 PM:

quote: Stephen Furley
Martin, the BBFC is not government; it is an independent organisation. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be the case that the licensing authority had the final say.

It still is, as far as movies shown in cinemas (defined as a business that shows films to customers on its premises in exchange for money): the legal framework put in place by the 1909 Cinematograph Act is still in force.

However, the waters are muddied by the Video Recordings Act 1984, under which the BBFC is designated as the official classifying body. So as far as rating DVDs, BDs, games and that sort of stuff is concerned (AFAIK the 1984 Act only applies to offline media, and online streamed stuff is not subject to any direct regulation as yet, though I could be wrong on that point), the BBFC is effectively acting as a government agency, in that its decisions carry legal force. If you sell a DVD of I Spit on Your Grave to a 10-year old, you can be sent to jail. If you sell that same 10-year old a ticket to see it in your cinema, the worst that can happen is that you lose your cinema licence.

Returning to the topic, agreed completely with everyone else that this "study" is a pile of shite. To add to all the other arguments against it already here, the depiction of smoking has effectively been banned from mainstream movies and TV dramas for 10-15 years now (except in films set in the past and/or by villains).

But has smoking in the general population diminished during this period? My understanding is that in the developed world, it's held steady at around 20-25% of the population smoking tobacco regularly. We're now down to the hard core, everyone who is going to buy the propaganda has already bought it, and the only way you're going to decrease smoking even further now is by prohibition, which would bring its own problems. Though as a side note, a doctor friend of mine recently mentioned some research done recently, which argued that far from being a failure, prohibition (of alcohol in the 1920s) was actually a huge success in terms of public health, with reductions in alcohol-related diseases (both acute, e.g. accidents, and chronic, e.g. liver disease) contributing far more to the economy than organized crime sucked out of it. So maybe wackos such as Carrie Nation (who IMHO is sorely overdue to have a big movie made about her) and her ilk weren't so wacko after all...

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-19-2015, 08:41 AM:

There are actually arguments that have been made that smokers are good for the economy--not because they are buying cigarettes, but because they die early and therefore tend to take less out of programs like Social Security than they pay into them and also because they tend to avoid expensive health care issues late in life.

Not that this means that we should be encouraging people to smoke (or prohibiting them from consuming alcohol).

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 04-19-2015, 09:42 AM:

I would say lower the age to purchase and drink alcohol to 18. Leave the R ratings criteria the way they are. I do remember that rating used to stricter in the years past.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-19-2015, 10:25 AM:

I think the MPAA's movie ratings system has become pretty irrelevant over the past 30 years due to all the different ways people can access adult-oriented content now.

When the MPAA's ratings system was first adopted in the late 1960's most people could only see adult oriented content by watching movies in theaters. Obviously this made the ratings system very important. Not many people had cable TV back then. They just had 3 regular channels and maybe PBS. Premium cable channels like HBO, which showed movies uncensored, didn't become widely available until the mid 1970's. Most music back then was pretty sanitized to be radio-friendly.

Today any parent trying to shield their kids from objectionable content is fighting a losing battle. There are many sources for viewing movies with uncut adult oriented content. The Internet has lots of other outlets for adult oriented content that just Hollywood studio movies. Premium cable networks are airing some shows with content that would get a NC-17 rating if put in a Hollywood studio movie release.

This study involving R-rated movies and their effect on teens is obviously pretty tainted. It assumes Hollywood movies are the only outlet teens have in accessing adult oriented content. That might have been true in 1970. But it is way off base in 2015.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-19-2015, 11:26 AM:

Agreed. The problem that all attempts at censorship/classification/rating has to crack is that in the developed world at least, the infrastructure simply isn't there to enforce these decisions online. It is in some totalitarian societies, but even in those countries the determined have technological workarounds (e.g. VPNs, TOR, satellite connections and that sort of stuff).

quote: Scott Norwood
There are actually arguments that have been made that smokers are good for the economy

I once heard the claim that the tax on cigarettes in the UK raises £9 for every £1 the National Health Service spends on treating smoking-related diseases. It was made by a pro-smoking lobby group, no doubt funded lavishly by the tobacco industry, and so they will have crunched the numbers as favorably to them as they credibly could. But still, the economics of public health issues are rarely as simple as they seem at first glance.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-19-2015, 12:40 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Leave the R ratings criteria the way they are. I do remember that rating used to stricter in the years past.

In my theatre we generally let kids who are in high school into R-rated movies unaccompanied. Most of the high school kids are at least 16, or they turn 16 during their freshman year. Of course it's easy for us since we know almost everyone, and if a parent of a high school kid wants us to keep their kid out of R-rated movies we're more than happy to comply. (It's been years since we've had a request like that though.)

I like this system becuase that way a whole group of kids becomes "eligible" to go to R-rated movies at once, and we don't have to check IDs.

I think the R-rated admission age should be lowered to 16 or even 15. That way, most high school kids could attend R-rated movies. High school is a "rite of passage" for kids anyway so that could be one more perk they get when they enter high school age, along with getting their drivers license.

There are very few parents who don't allow kids of that age (or even lower ages) to watch R content at home anyway.

There were a couple of kids in our lobby not too long ago looking at movie posters. One of them pointed at an R-rated poster and said "I wanna see this one." The other said "It's rated R, we'll have to wait and watch it at home."

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-19-2015, 04:34 PM:

Besides the point already mentioned, I think there has to be a distinction between depictions of teens partying and having fun while drinking, and adults being responsible when drinking - such as a glass of wine or cocktail with a meal.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-19-2015, 06:46 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I think the MPAA's movie ratings system has become pretty irrelevant over the past 30 years

I think there is still value in rating content for those parents who do take advantage of the information. And there are still kids who respect their parents enough to not watch restricted content, even if they could do so without their parent knowing.

But I do think enforcement of the ratings at the movie theatre has become a pointless exercise. It does little more than create an adversarial relationship between the theatre and it's customers. Teens will constantly try to game the system, and then get angry when they get caught. And now days, there are many parents who will get angry about having to come to the theatre to give their kids permission, or watch the movie with their kids (depending on the specific theatre's policy).

I can't remember the last time I had a parent actually respond positively to me blocking their kids from seeing an R rated movie. Even when you inform the parent the movie is rated R when they are buying tickets for younger kids, they almost never change their mind. And I can only remember two or three instances in the last 10 years where a parent came back and said they wish they had listened to my warning.

I'm sure there are many parents who do prevent their kids from watching R rated movies. And I'm sure there are plenty of kids who respect their parents about that. But those decisions are made before they arrive at the theatre and have virtually nothing to do with the theatre's enforcement of the ratings.

If I have one complaint about the ratings system, it's that I do not think they have adapted to changing societal values. For example, they still give too much weight to language when rating movies. This despite the fact we are seeing stronger language in the 9:00 and 10:00 hour on network TV.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-19-2015, 07:46 PM:

One area where I do have a strong objection to the MPAA's ratings system: how they handle the NC-17 rating. They refuse to make a distinction between porn and movies that aren't porn but are still only for adults anyway. Any movies rated NC-17 won't be booked by certain movie theater chains (like Carmike for example). Newspapers aren't nearly as important for advertising as they used to be, but still some publications have refused to carry ads for NC-17 rated movies. In general, a NC-17 rating is a commercial kiss of death for nearly any theatrical movie release.

I have a feeling major Hollywood studios are going to start breathing down the necks of those running the MPAA (the studios are what fund the MPAA) over the NC-17 issue. Hollywood movies are no longer cutting edge. A lot more edgy and ground-breaking content is being originated on cable and the Internet. Hollywood studio movies are often tame and predictable by comparison. I think the ratings system as it is currently managed is starting to put Hollywood movies at a competitive disadvantage.

Getting back to the original topic, did the people who were conducting this study bother to think about all the different influences that might be turning teens into drunks? I guarantee movies alone aren't the key in it.

Teens often get involved with using drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. due to people they know personally doing the same thing. Any correlation with movies may only be a reflection of the teens' interests. If the kids are into partying hard they're probably going to be a whole lot more interested in watching movies featuring young people partying hard. They're going to be less likely to watch some high brow Merchant-Ivory picture.

If these guys really want to fight teen drinking they gotta reach teens on a personal level. Alcoholism gets passed to young people by way of family and friends. Blaming it on movies is a cop out.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 04-22-2015, 03:42 PM:

quote:
In that Facebook movie "Social Network", late teen/early 20 somethings were snorting cocaine off teenage girls breasts and it got a PG13 rating!!!???

Maybe they convinced the MPAA it was a documentary and not a movie. [Wink]