The more frequently adolescents encounter smoking scenes in media such as television, films, and YouTube, the lower their aversion to tobacco and the more tolerant they become of smoking, a study has found. With short-form content and social networking services (SNS) cited as the main channels of exposure, experts say media literacy education for adolescents needs to be strengthened.
According to the paper "The Effect of Exposure to Media Smoking Scenes on Adolescents' Attitudes Tolerating Smoking," published in the latest issue of Korea Youth Research on Friday, researchers conducted a survey of 3,384 middle and high school students nationwide between August and September last year. The proportion who said they had smoking experience was 4.2 percent, about one-quarter of the adult smoking rate of 17.9 percent.
The most common time for first smoking was the second year of middle school. However, the proportion who said they first smoked in elementary school or the first year of middle school was also 1.25 percent among middle school students and 1.04 percent among high school students. This confirmed cases of smoking beginning at relatively young ages. By gender, the smoking experience rate among male students was 5.9 percent, higher than the 2.2 percent among female students.
The researchers focused on the possibility that exposure to smoking scenes in media could influence adolescents' perception of smoking. Asked whether they "frequently see smoking scenes on TV, in films, and on YouTube," 44.3 percent of respondents said yes, while 30.4 percent said no. The media most commonly used by adolescents were found to be short-form content, YouTube, and SNS.
The analysis found that adolescents who were frequently exposed to smoking scenes had a stronger tendency to perceive smoking characters as attractive. They were also confirmed to show a more tolerant attitude toward smoking than adolescents with a lower frequency of exposure to smoking scenes. This means that smoking scenes in media do not remain a mere background element but can influence the formation of adolescents' perceptions of smoking.
"Smoking scenes in media are sometimes combined with a character's rebellious or cool image," said Bae Sang-ryul, a senior research fellow at the National Youth Policy Institute. "There is a possibility that adolescents interpret such scenes positively."
He added, "It is important to develop adolescents' ability to view smoking scenes in media critically," stressing that "smoking prevention policies should not stop at simply informing about health risks but need to be designed considering the media use environment of adolescents."
