DOES
WATCHING SMOKING IN MOVIES PROMOTE TEENAGE SMOKING?
I.
Introduction
According
to Oxford English Dictionary (n.d), the word ‘smoking’ is define as the habit of smoking
cigarettes. A research shows that among young teens (aged 13 to 15), about one
in five smokes worldwide, between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start
smoking every day - roughly half of whom live in Asia and evidence shows that
around 50 percent of those who start smoking in adolescent years go on to smoke
for 15 to 20 years. The factors why does watching smoking scenes in movies
promote teenage because smoking exposure effect on adolescent smoking
initiation, smoking initiation is affect by the social influences and media
have all aspects that adolescent are
trying to be.
II.
Body
A.
The
movie-smoking exposure effect on adolescent smoking initiation.
1
Anderson
and Bushman (2002) mentioned that, psychologists have been concerned the potential for the
central role of movies in American culture to shape attitudes and influenced
the behavior of adolescents.
2
According to Sargent,
Tanski and Gibson(2007), some 500 movies delivered nearly 14 billion smoking
impressions to U.S. children ages 10 to 14 with applying techniques from the
marketing and advertising fields.
a) From
the movies that young children watched, they are exposed to a great deal of
smoking.
i.
Most of viewers in
young age thought that smoking scenes in advertisement or movies are cool.
Hence, they will start to light up and smoking.
B.
Social
influences play important roles in smoking initiation.
1. According
to Dalton et al., (2003), movie effect more responsive compared with low
pressure to parent smoking to adolescents.
2. According
to Wills et al., (2007,2008), they are exposed to movies in groups, because they
watch movies with their friends.
a) Group
influences is likely more influenced than individual influence.
i.
When one of the group
members start to smoking, the other members will follow it especially young
children.
C.
Media
have all things that adolescents are trying to be.
1. According
to Dal Cin, Gibson, Zanna, Shumate, and Fong (2007), exposure to the characters
and storyline affect the viewers.
a) Characters
and storyline will develop the mind of the viewers to follow it.
i. When hero start to smoke, viewer especially
children will start to follow on what the hero does.
2. ‘Adolescents
who saw smoking scenes attributed higher social status to adolescent smokers
generally and also reported increased personal intentions to smoke’ (Pechman
and Shih, 1999).
III.
Conclusion
As
conclusion, media plays an important role that contribute to the smoking among
teenagers. This is because media have all things that adolescents are trying to
be, the social influences increases the smoking initiations and the
movie-smoking exposure effect on adolescent smoking initiation. This can be
overcome by prevent teenagers to watch the movies that contain smoking scenes
and media should filter the scenes that show the smoking attitude.
