Splicetoday

Moving Pictures
Aug 07, 2008, 11:09AM

Early Exposure

Researchers have established that childhood exposure to extremely violent movies has an effect on violent behavior, but until recently nobody knew exactly how many kids were watching slasher flicks. It turns out that 12.5% of children between the ages of 10 and 14 have seen violent movies, with boys, minorities, and the poor being more likely than others.

Directors of bloody flicks like "Blade II" and "Hannibal" may be reaching a younger audience than they anticipate, as Dartmouth Medical School researchers have found that an average of 12.5 percent of children ages 10 to 14 have seen movies rated R for violence by the Motion Picture Association of America. The team found that exposure to “extremely violent” movies was linked to heritage, education and socioeconomic background.

The team conducted the research to fill what they saw as a gap in a field that has previously focused more on the effects of childhood exposure to media, according to the study.

“We know so much about the harmful effects of exposure to violent media content, but how much exposure children actually get has been largely ignored,” Keilah Worth, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at DMS and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, told the Office of Public Affairs in a press release. “Now, we’re learning more about the large numbers of kids seeing this material and who they are.”

According to the survey, several independent risk factors were associated with exposure to “extremely violent” movies. Boys, minorities, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and respondents with low school performance were all found to be more likely to have seen the movies.

Discussion
  • Too many damn surveys, one after another contradicting the previous one. The media discovered obesity two years ago. The media (to be fair, reporting on those surveys, although the sensationalism is a bonus), like clockwork, says that youths are either smoking less or more pot, depending upon the year. Teen sex is up or down, depending on what report you read. On this Darmouth survey, I find the 12.5% cited of kids between 10 and 14 seeing violent movies very low, regardless of sex, race or income.

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