Post 11 Response to prompt from 11/5

                In the passage “Imitation of Film: Here’s Smoking for You Kid” the author Nicholas Balakar expresses how much movies influence and expose young children to smoke. He mentions in studies how percentages increase on children who begin smoking by imitation because of the rated R movies they have seen. To lower the percentage of children smoking at a younger age, more parents need to become stricter on what their children watch.

                Dr. James D. Sargent stated, “Rated R movies contain twice as much smoking” and “studies show that kids begin watching rated R movies usually in the fourth or fifth grade.”  Though rated R movies are not specifically meant for younger children, parents are becoming more careless. So now with the permission from parents or lack of carelessness their children become a target for underage smoking without them realizing what they are doing.

                As parents, it is our job to filter what our children watch as much as possible. For example, most 10-14 year old boys cannot resist watching the X-men movies. One of the main characters in the movie is Wolverine. Parents pay no mind to the fact he is constantly smoking a cigar, but only because he is perceived to be a hero in the production.  Another example is some movie theaters. I recently went to the movies to watch “Bad Grandpa” which was rated R film with plenty of profanity, nudity, and of course smoking. I could not believe the amount of under aged kids that were there with an adult present in the theater.

                By watching a specific character or movie because of its level of humor, these young kids are subconsciously being exposed and influenced to smoke. The study also says “the child who has the greatest amount of exposure to smoking  in movies were more than two and a half times more likely to smoke as to those who had the least exposure.”

                Since children are so easily influenced by what they see, they don’t believe smoking is bad. Our job as adults and parents is to do more filtering on what our kids watch so we can prevent that. I believe if this is done more often; the percentage of under aged smoking will decrease drastically.