Boozy films 'turn children into drinkers'

Watching films in which actors knock back alcohol can increase the risk of a child becoming an underage drinker, academics warn today.

Experts say that teenagers who have seen the most films featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start consuming alcohol as those who watched the least.

Parents should closely monitor the films their children watch, advise the researchers, while Hollywood should look at phasing out drinking scenes, just as it has for smoking.

The team, from a number of US universities, aliken American films to the flu virus, quickly spreading risky drinking behaviour around the globe.

For two years they conducted regular phone interviews with 6,500 children, aged 10 to 14 at the start of the study.

They asked them about the films they watched, whether they consumed alcohol, whether they drank without their parents knowing, and whether they took part in 'binge' drinking.

They found watching lots of films with drinking scenes was one of the most powerful factors, when it came to predicting both whether a child would start drinking, and progress to binge drinking.

Only being an older child at the start of the study, and having lots of friends who drank, were more important when it came to predicting who took up drinking.

Writing in the British Medical Journal Open, they suggested that Hollywood should place "similar emphasis" on vetting films for drinking scenes, as they already did for smoking scenes.

Category: Health News