Do R-Rated Films Make Teens Smoke?

A new study says yes--but only in the case of white adolescents.

The study, published in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, interviewed non-smoking teens in 2002 on how much television they watched, the films they had seen that year and whether parents restricted their viewing choices. At a 2004 follow-up, they found that white teens who had seen a high number of R-rated films and whose parents did not supervise television viewing were seven times as likely to have started smoking, even when statistics were adjusted to account for other factors. Black students, however, tended to smoke at equal rates whether they had watched many R-rated films or not.

Researchers speculate that this is due to the "transportation theory," which speculates that viewer involvement in a medium determines its impact. Past studies have shown black teens relate better to black characters, while the majority of characters on television and in film in the U.S. are white.

Read more: R-Rated Movies May Boost Teens' Smoking Rates (PDF)
ABSTRACT: R-Rated Movies, Bedroom Televisions, and Initiation of Smoking by White and Black Adolescents