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Parental Restriction of Movie Viewing Prospectively Predicts Adolescent Alcohol and Marijuana Initiation: Implications for Media Literacy Programs

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Abstract

Youth are heavy consumers of media, and exposure to mature media content is associated with initiation and progression of substance use. Parental restriction of such content has been shown to be an effective mechanism to reduce negative consequences attributed to exposure to mature media content. This study assessed the influence of parental restriction of movie watching across Motion Picture Association of America rating categories on subsequent alcohol and marijuana initiation at 1- and 2-year follow-up. Using data from a longitudinal study of adolescent substance use (N = 1023), we used logistic regression analyses to determine the odds of alcohol and marijuana initiation across movie rating categories, within R-rated restriction categories in particular, and based on changes in parental restriction of movies over time. All analyses controlled for important parental, personality, and behavioral correlates of adolescent substance use. Results suggest that restriction of R-rated movies is protective of both alcohol and marijuana initiation. Important differences among parental restriction of R-rated movie categories emerged such that being allowed to watch them with adult supervision was protective of substance use, while those who reported watching R-rated films despite parental restrictions were at heightened risk for alcohol initiation. Changes in parental movie restrictions were not predictive of substance use initiation over the subsequent year. Implications of these findings for media literacy program prevention strategies are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The current study did not investigate initiation of tobacco use. While it would have been useful to contrast findings of marijuana initiation with smoking initiation, preliminary data analysis revealed that very little smoking initiation occurred in the current sample (3.60% between W1 and W2, 6.01% between W1 and W3). Therefore, we concluded that rates were too low to reliably test whether parental restrictions influenced tobacco initiation.

  2. For Cohort 2 only, measurement of the second wave of parental restriction data occurred at W3, rather than W2. Thus, Cohort 2 is excluded from analyses in which the second wave of parental restriction data is used, which are only results presented in Table 6 assessing the influence of changes in parental restrictions on subsequent substance use.

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Funding

This research was supported by R01 AA016838, K02 AA021761, and T32 AA007459 from NIAAA. NIH had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI, USA

    Melissa J. Cox, Tim Janssen & Kristina M. Jackson

  2. Department of Health Education and Promotion, East Carolina University, 2206 Carol Belk Building, Mail Stop 529, Greenville, NC, 27858, USA

    Melissa J. Cox

  3. Department of Data Science, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Joy Gabrielli

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  1. Melissa J. Cox
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  2. Joy Gabrielli
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Correspondence to Melissa J. Cox.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standard.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Cox, M.J., Gabrielli, J., Janssen, T. et al. Parental Restriction of Movie Viewing Prospectively Predicts Adolescent Alcohol and Marijuana Initiation: Implications for Media Literacy Programs. Prev Sci 19, 914–926 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-018-0891-8

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