Outline

DOES WATCHING SMOKING IN MOVIES PROMOTE TEENAGE SMOKING?

I.                   Introduction

According to Oxford English Dictionary, 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        According to Anderson and Bushman (2002), 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.

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.

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.