A study conducted recently by Dartmouth scientists found that nearly one-third of young children and teenagers in America have seen movies with "extremely violent" content.
Researchers at Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth medical and undergraduate students collaborated to survey 5000 children in the Northern New England area who were enrolled in fifth through eighth grades -- roughly ages 10 to 14.
The children were given a list of 50 randomly selected movies chosen from the 600 highest-earning movies released between 1988 and 1999, and asked to select the ones that they had seen.
From the body of 600 movies, the researchers determined the films that, in their opinion, had the most violent content.
According to the researchers this meant that the movies were R-rated and contained scenes that depicted, among other things, "sadistic rape, sodomy, brutal or ritualistic murders and cannibalism."
The study reports that on average, 28 percent of the students surveyed had seen such movies.
"Through movies, adolescents are being exposed to brutal and often sexualized violence," the lead author of the paper and Dartmouth Medical School Professor of Pediatrics James Sargent said in a prepared statement.
Among fifth grade students, the most popular of these violent movies were "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Scream," which about 40 percent of those surveyed had seen. Both movies received a rating of 'R' from the Motion Picture Association of America, meaning that persons under 17 are restricted from viewing them.
"The General's Daughter," which depicts a violent rape, was seen by 20 percent of the fifth graders and 27 percent overall. 20 percent of the children had seen "Natural Born Killers," a movie that features young murders and strong sexual content
"Parents wouldn't think of exposing their children to food with arsenic in it. We need to teach them to think of violent movies in the same way," Sargent said.
The research team said that even though the children surveyed were supposedly too young to gain access to these movies, as recent advances in technology such as DVDs and digital cable become more widely available, parents and the MPAA have more trouble controlling what children are able to watch.
The Dartmouth department of psychological and brain sciences has received an additional $3.6 million in federal grants to continue this study and explore how exposure to movie violence affects childhood development and what role parents can play in limiting their children's exposure.
