Even though the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)'s film-rating system is designed to provide guidelines to parents and their children as to what the contents of a movie may refer to, a new scientific study finds that teens who are allowed to watch R-rated films are more likely to pick up smoking, or at least believe that lighting a cigarette is natural.

According to the MPAA, the R (restricted) rating shows that:

– Teenagers under the age of 17 require to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, and
– The movies may contain very strong language or strong explicit emphasis, strong explicit nudity, strong violence and gore, or strong drug content.

Nevertheless, there are more and more parents that allow their children to see these types of movies by themselves, without giving them any kind of counsel on the behaviors and actions depicted in the motion pictures. At a very early age, teenagers may find it difficult to distinguish facts from fiction, hence the results of the new research.

“We don't know why this is so. It may have to do with a parenting style that is permissive of activities that are not age-appropriate. Or it may be an outcome of all the smoking scenes in R-rated movies,” the lead author of the study, Chyke Doubeni, PhD, who is a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, explains. The paper, funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, appears in the February 21 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Parents need to be mindful about the movies their children watch for a variety of obvious reasons. This study points out one more reason for not allowing children to watch movies that are not appropriate for their age,” University of Massachusetts Medical School investigator Dr. Joseph DiFranza, who is also one of the co-authors of the paper, shares.

In addition, the researchers have learned that children who have smoking parents are more likely to believe that cigarettes are accessible, as compared to those whose parents do not smoke and who are not allowed to watch R-rated movies.

“This implies that parental smoking likely contributes to youth smoking through increased perceived accessibility. Parents need to understand that your kids are more likely to get cigarettes if you smoke, particularly if you smoke in the home or allow someone else to smoke in the home,” Doubeni concludes.