This is a hotly debated topic for my husband and me: what age to start exposing kids to PG-13- and R-rated movies. I know the guidelines are 13 and 17 respectively, but is there data behind those ages? I’d like to follow those guidelines, but my husband says he saw R-rated movies at age 8 and he turned out fine. I truly don’t think kids are mentally equipped to handle some of the more serious, sexual, and violent nature of those films. What does the data say?
—Ashley G.
There is no direct answer to this question, unsurprisingly. But there is some data that might inform your discussions.
The first thing to note is that after the age of 2 or 3, kids definitely can learn things from television. They can learn good things, like letters from Sesame Street. They can learn scary or disturbing things, bad words, bad ideas. Probably the most important question to ask about any movie, regardless of the rating, is whether you think your child should be exposed to the content of it. Some of the answer is likely to depend on your values and what your child is like. Some kids deal with scary stuff better than others; some families are more comfortable with profanity than others — there is no one answer. You might think that certain content is challenging but would prompt good discussions (like the time my mom made me watch the movie Kids with her in high school). But you want to be careful about what is good for your kid.
A more precise question that is sometimes asked of the data is whether exposure to violent video games or television will prompt violent behavior. I talk about this data more in The Family Firm. By and large, it’s reassuring. In lab experiments, you can see that in the moment when kids are playing violent video games, they are more likely to show signs of aggression. But when we look overall, in well-controlled studies, playing these games doesn’t seem to increase aggressive behavior.
My sense from this is you might both find something to like here. Your husband may be right that some content could be reasonable at younger ages, but you are likely also right that it’s worth really thinking about what you want your kids to see. I would also note for him that just because he turned out great doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t upset at the time. This episode of This American Life is worth a listen, for a story about a time that a bunch of elementary school kids watched The Leprechaun in school and how some of them wouldn’t shower alone for months.
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