--- title: Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence description: They're getting desensitized, study suggests canonical: https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-20T15:01:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:52:44.215Z article:section: Health og:title: Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence og:description: They're getting desensitized, study suggests og:url: https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d45f8b1f72a0c0/698761aea988ca66b76a9e9d/movie-sex-kids.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5120 og:image:height: 2880 og:image:alt: Girl in Movie Theater Eating Popcorn og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence twitter:description: They're getting desensitized, study suggests twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d45f8b1f72a0c0/698761aea988ca66b76a9e9d/movie-sex-kids.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 20, 2014 3:01 PM UTC  Girl in Movie Theater Eating Popcorn Girl in Movie Theater Eating PopcornFuse/Getty Images by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 20, 2014 3:01 PM UTC If you’ve felt like PG-13 movies have gotten more violent lately, you’re right. A new [study](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/10/15/peds.2014-1167.abstract) published in the journal _Pediatrics_ reports that violent scenes are now more common, with gun violence tripling in movies since 1985\. Sex scenes in R-rated movies are up, too. One possible reason: the more parents watch movies filled with sex and violence, the less they appear to care about the age of children watching them, too, the study suggests. Annenberg Public Policy Center [researchers](http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/) screened several movie clips in succession for 1,000 parents of pre-teens and teens, asking them what they thought was an appropriate minimum age for their child to watch the movie. The more movie clips the parents watched, the more lax they became about who should watch the film. At first, the parents rated violent scenes appropriate for kids at age 16.9 on average, and sex scenes appropriate for kids starting at age 17.2\. But by the end of the study, those thresholds had dropped. Parents thought kids ages 13.9 could watch the violent scenes and kids aged 14 could watch the sex scenes. Outside of the lab, parents have input in how movies are rated. Several members on the board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the group that rates movies, have children, the study says. Researchers think that the increase in sex and violence may actually be due to parents becoming desensitized to the scenes. This, the authors conclude, “may contribute to the increasing acceptance of both types of content by both parents and the raters employed by the film industry.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/"},"headline":"Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence","datePublished":"2014-10-20T15:01:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:52:44.215Z","description":"They're getting desensitized, study suggests","url":"https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/","keywords":["relationships","Teens","movies","Sex","Parents","violence","kids","adolescents"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d45f8b1f72a0c0/698761aea988ca66b76a9e9d/movie-sex-kids.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d45f8b1f72a0c0/698761aea988ca66b76a9e9d/movie-sex-kids.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Girl in Movie Theater Eating Popcorn","caption":"Girl in Movie Theater Eating Popcorn","creditText":"Fuse/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/relationships/","name":"relationships"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3523148/sex-and-violence-movies/","name":"Why Parents Let Kids Watch More Movies With Sex and Violence"}}]}] ```