Recent studies on moral compromise in the media–statistics to accompany the article “Extreme Makeover: Media Edition” by Karis Vogel
Smoking
Adolescents with high exposure to incidents of smoking in the movies were twice as likely to try smoking themselves. Smoking is featured in 75% of contemporary box office hits, 25% of music videos, and 20% of television shows. —National Cancer Institute, 2008
Profanity
The number of expletives on prime-time television has doubled in the last 10 years, growing to nearly 11,000 expletives during prime time in 2007. This includes 1,147 censored or uncensored uses of the f-word, on 184 different programs.—Parents Television Council, 2008
Sex
Teens who consume a lot of sexualized content in their media (movies, television, music, video games) are more than twice as likely to have sex by age 16 than their less-exposed peers.—University of North Carolina study, 2006
Violence
Women who were heavy viewers of violent TV shows as young children were more than twice as likely as other young women to have thrown something at their spouse. They were more than four times as likely to have assaulted another adult.—University of Michigan study, 2003
Wife-beating
Men who were heavy viewers of violent TV shows as young children were twice as likely as other males to push, grab, or shove their spouses by the time they were in their early 20s.—University of Michigan study, 2003
Pregnancy
Teens who watched sexual programming on television were twice as likely to have gotten pregnant or gotten someone else pregnant, compared to teens who did not watch sexual programming.—Pediatrics, 2008
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