Movies spur smoking more than sports teams do

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Kids who play team sports are less likely than their peers to smoke, but sports cannot beat the influence of movies, a new study suggests.

A number of studies have found that media images of smoking may sway the odds that children and teenagers will take up the habit.

This latest study, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggests that the influence of movies may undo some of the positive effects of team sports.

Among the more than 2,000 9- to 14-year-olds researchers followed for seven years, those who were not involved in team sports as teens were twice as likely to smoke.

However, when the researchers looked at participants' exposure to smoking in the movies, they found evidence of media influences among all teenagers, whether they played sports or not.

The bottom line for parents is that although sports can decrease the odds their kids will smoke, media images still have a strong impact, according to Dr. Anna M. Adachi-Mejia and colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

But parents should not be alone in policing kids' exposure to on-screen smoking, the researchers say.

Prohibiting smoking in youth-oriented movies, or giving an R rating to movies that contain smoking, are two measures the industry could take, Adachi-Mejia and her colleagues point out.

"This study," they write, "adds to the mounting evidence pointing to the need for explicit policies addressing ways to minimize youth exposure to movie smoking."

The findings are based on 2,048 New Hampshire and Vermont students who were between the ages of 9 and 14 at the study's start. At that time, they were surveyed about top box-office movies they had seen; their participation in team sports was assessed when they were between the ages of 16 and 21.

The researchers calculated the number of smoking scenes the children had seen based on the movie survey. They found that, on average, students had seen nearly 1,200 instances of smoking on film.

In general, the more smoking scenes participants had seen, the more likely they were to take up the habit themselves. Those with the greatest exposure were 63 percent more likely to smoke than those who'd seen the least on-screen smoking.

And while kids involved in team sports were less likely to smoke across the board, they still appeared to be influenced by movie images. Just 3.5 percent of those with the least exposure to on-screen smoking were smokers themselves -- versus 23 percent of their counterparts who'd seen the most on-screen smoking.

The sharp discrepancy, the researchers say, highlights the importance of both encouraging sports and limiting media exposure to smoking.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, July 2009.