Report Smokes Out Tobacco Use on TV Shows Popular Among Kids

A review of television shows popular among young people — the group most at risk to start smoking — suggests that broadcasters aren’t doing much of a job filtering out images of tobacco use. Forty percent of the more than 70 episodes of such shows as “Family Guy,” “Gossip Girl,” “Heroes” and “The Simpsons” included in the analysis contained at least one depiction of tobacco use, according to the review, published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. And of those depictions, 89 percent were of cigarettes.

“Among young people aged 8 to 18, 30 percent of their media use is spent on watching television,” Dr. Cheryl G. Healton, president of the anti-tobacco advocacy group Legacy, said in a news release. “The report shows that nearly 1 million young people were exposed to tobacco images during the analysis, whether it was in an ashtray, on a billboard, or in a character’s hands.”

Researchers from Columbia University and Legacy set out to quantify teen exposure to smoking by watching some of the most popular shows among 12- to 17-year-olds during the fall, 2007 season. All of the episodes (representing an estimated 61.5 hours of programming throughout that fall season) were rated either TV-PG (“parental guidance suggested”) or the more stringent TV-14 (“parents strongly cautioned”).

Among episodes rated TV-PG, 50 percent showed one or more incidents of cigarette use, versus 26 percent for TV-14 episodes.

The percentage of episodes with tobacco use depictions was highest on the Fox network (44 percent) followed closely by The CW (41 percent). The show with the most depictions was “America’s Next Top Model.”

The Los Angeles Times noted that the shows reviewed by the researchers “were on for an average of only 38 minutes per day. Considering that the average kid in this age group watches 3 hours and 20 minutes of TV a day, these shows accounted for only 19% of their total viewing. So the total exposure to tobacco images is certainly higher.”

“This is bad, of course, because the more kids see smoking on TV, the more likely they are to pick up the habit themselves, according to multiple studies,” the Times added.

Legacy recently joined several groups in asking the Federal Communications Commission to update its TV ratings system so that parents can be warned about depictions of tobacco use.