--- 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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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=fd43378a-d46a-404f-9725-e4d1bd77abca&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) 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 Popcorn Fuse/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"}}]}] ```