I came across a research paper focusing on the amount of smoking on screen and how it impacts young people. The research was conducted at Arizona State University and comes to some very interesting conclusions. Although this research is a little outdated, it proves, nonetheless, that young people can be easily influenced by behavior on the TV screen.
The research shows that "A 1999 Office of National Drug Control Policy study of the 200 most popular video rentals in 1996 and 1997 revealed that 89 percent had smoking in them" and "another study, at Dartmouth Medical School showed this percentage varied between 88 percent and 92 percent in the top 25 box-office films since 1995."
This behavior is a classical example of modeling. What young people see in their role model and film heroes is essentially what they want to do too. This is very similar to advertisers using celebrities to promote products.
Another reason to promote media literacy!
The article can be found here. A PDF file with the entire research paper will download by clicking on complete research evaluation report.
So Tammy,you said that what young people saw in their role model from a movie is what they later imitate and do? As you have mentioned, this research is little bit old. It is an example of modeling, but I think that it is an example of modeling from "that times". Because I do not think that a teenager (year 2011) would start to smoke just because "the man from the movie" does. By the way, I know that you smoke, so I am interested whether is this your case as well :) Have you started to smoke because of "smoking on the screen"? I do not smoke, but I used to smoke for a while and actually I did start because of my friends, because they smoked so I smoked as well, silly I know :D Of course, there might be some cases when the kid started to smoke because of the media, but I think it is more effected by other factors...
ReplyDeleteHi Tammy! When I saw your topic, I had to comment on it right away. I am really glad that there is someone in our class who is against smoking same as I do. I hate smoking and I hate anything or anybody who supports it. Unfortunately, your blog is mainly about smoking supporters from the U.S., so I didn’t learn much about influences in the Czech Rep., but I really share your interest in such topic.
ReplyDeleteNika, I would like to respond to your comment. I think that many teenagers start smoking because in the movies,. the characters who smoke usually look so 'cool'. What media does is that they present smoking as a cool thing to do, for most teenagers self-image is very important, and when they see their favorite characters on TV, like Bruce Willis smoking in every movie, they want to become as cool as he does, so they start smoking at first just for fun, and, i think, everyone will agree that smoking is a matter of habit, if you start, you can't really stop.
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