3/19/2019 0 Comments What are kids consuming?When I was 11 years old the very first live action Transformers movie came out in theaters. Though it wasn’t earth shatteringly exciting for me, my cousin, Mark, really wanted to see it. So, he devised a plan. His parents wouldn’t let him see it in the United States because it was rated PG-13 and he was only 12, but in Canada it was only rated PG. He found a loop hole. But why was it rated differently in Canada? I literally live 2 hours from the border and suddenly the movie is appropriate for a younger audience? I didn’t know the border was that magical.
So, if it wasn’t magically turned cleaner and Megan Fox’s shirt didn’t magically cover her cleavage in the Canadian version, what is the difference? Now, I am not saying that the Canadian rating system is even close to being perfect, I don’t know if any country has really figured out how to do an effective rating system… however, let’s take a little look at the rating system in the United States and the good old MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). The Break Down In general, the MPAA is more lenient towards violence in movies than language or nudity[i]. In fact, if the movie contains more than one of the “harsher sexually-driven words” it gets bumped from a PG-13 rating to an R rating[ii]. So, movies like “The Kings Speech” where there is a scene featuring 12 F words[iii] gets an R rating while “The Dark Knight Rises”, a film featuring a fairly graphic torture scene, shootings, stabbings, explosions, and grenades[iv], gets the rating of PG-13. So, what is worse? 12 F words or watching someone set a man on fire? Swearing Though there is little research done on the effects of swearing on children, one study found that when swearing is used to replace aggression in a movie it could be harmful for the child[v]. But, for the most part, swearing is not used in films as a replacement for aggression but is mostly used for positive outcomes, such as jokes, stress relief, or in order to fit in with a crowd[vi]. I am not saying that films should include more swear words, or that the ones included are justified. However, if I had to choose between teaching my child to punch someone in the eye when they are mad or swear under their breath when they stub their toe, I would definitely choose the later. Violence Research has found that children are affected by viewing violence in media. In fact, there are short and long-term effects including, aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, aggressive behavior, desensitization, and lowered prosocial behavior among children who consume a high dose of violent media[vii]. Not only does it increase aggressive behavior, but it also increases verbally aggressive behavior[viii]. So, those pesky swear words we are trying to shield the children from are actually a biproduct of their high doses of violent media consumption. Children and adolescence aren’t just exposed to a couple acts of violence in media every once in a while. By the age of 18 the average teen will have viewed an estimated 200 000 acts of violence on TV alone[ix]. Ratings are not a reliable predictor of violence in films[x]. Now, you might be sitting there thinking “yeah but, just cause my kid watches Joker torture some people doesn’t mean they will go do that, right?” Well, I sure hope not. Children Processing Media Children consume media a little differently than we do. They are still at the beginning of the whole development processes. Before the age of 8, children can’t discriminate between what is fantasy and what is reality[xi]. If I am being completely honest, I thought Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fud were really real when I was a kid. I honestly thought that the key to getting out of a fight was to slyly trick the person holding the gun into saying it’s actually duck season…thanks Looney Toons. But even once children are older and can differentiate between fantasy and reality there are still limitations to their understanding[xii]. It isn’t until adolescence that children begin to question the probability of the things they are seeing, understand that the creators of media may have an agenda, and realize the association between what they are watching and their feelings[xiii]. The full development of the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control, does not finish until emerging adulthood[xiv]. So not only are young children who can’t tell the difference between Looney toons and the news consuming media differently, but adolescence may be under the influence of their not quite fully developed prefrontal cortex, and corresponding lack of impulse control, when consuming media as well. The Current System So, if we are trying to watch out for our children and adolescence, who are we trusting to rate the movies? Are we giving the job to a group of qualified researchers who know about how media affects children? Here is how the MPAA does this whole rating thing. The rating board includes a chair person chosen by the MPAA, “appropriate staff members”, senior raters chosen by the chair person, and raters[ii]. The raters are all parents who cannot have any affiliations with the film industry and must have a child between the ages of 5 and 15[ii]. That is it. That is the qualification. They receive some training and then they rate movies for the whole country. Now, I know we don’t live in a perfect world. I know that we can’t protect children from everything. I know that violence is everywhere. But I also know that children are negatively affected by consuming media violence. They don’t understand media the same way that the group of MPAA raters do. We might be protecting them from F bombs but why aren’t we protecting them from real bombs? Why is our priority in clean mouths and not in clean minds and actions? We expect the ratings of movies to be dependable, but can we really depend on them? [i] Wong, T. (2012, Mar 22). How Movies Get Their Ratings. The Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2012/03/22/how_movies_get_their_ratings.html [ii] Motion Picture Association of America. (2010, Jan 01). Classification and Rating Rules. Retrieved from https://filmratings.com/Content/Downloads/rating_rules.pdf [iii] https://kids-in-mind.com/k/kingsspeech.htm [iv] https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/the-dark-knight [v] Riggio R. E. (2012, May 18). Will Swearing Harm Your Child? Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201205/will-swearing-harm-your-child [vi] Jay T., & Janschewitz K. (2012, May). The Science of Swearing. Association for Psychological science. Retrieved from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-science-of-swearing [vii] http://web.a.ebscohost.com.erl.lib.byu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=3db36ba4-6537-4f54-a4fc-ccffcb1f96ce%40sdc-v-sessmgr04 [viii] Gentile, D. A., Coyne, S. and Walsh, D. A. (2011), Media violence, physical aggression, and relational aggression in school age children: a short‐term longitudinal study. Aggr. Behav., 37: 193-206. doi:10.1002/ab.20380 [ix] Huston AC, Donnerstein E, Fairchild H, et al. Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press; 1992 [x] Webb T, Jenkins L, Browne N, Afifi AA, Kraus J. Violent entertainment pitched to adolescents: an analysis of PG-13 films. Pediatrics.2007;119 (6). Available at:www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/119/6/e1219 [xi] American Academy of Pediatrics. (2009). Media Violence. Pediatrics, 124(50) Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/124/5/1495.full.pdf [xii] Spear, L. P. (2010). The behavioral neuroscience of adolescence. New York, NY, US: W W Norton & Co. [xiii] Morison, P., Kelly, H., & Gardner, H. (1981). Reasoning about the realities on television: A developmental study. Journal of Broadcasting, 25(3), 229-242. doi:10.1080/08838158109386447 [xiv] Pharo, H., Sim, C., Graham, M., Gross, J. & Hayne, H. (2011). Risky business: executive function, personality, and reckless behavior during adolescence and emerging adulthood. Behavioral Neuroscience, 125(6), 970-978
0 Comments
|
Archives |