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Shows Encourage Teen Drinking

Shows 'encourage teen drinking'
The use of alcohol in TV soap operas could be desensitising teens to the dangers of alcohol, a report suggests.
Ref. BBC

Drinking Teen Encourage Shows

It's not just in "soaps" but in TV commercials, sitcoms, cartoons, and movies. Just about any medium of entertainment and communication contain subtle - or not so subtle - messages about drinking. It's really difficult to be teaching my child one thing - not to drink or do drugs, etc. - and have the rest of the world teaching something else.

All in my opinion.
Roz

Shows Encourage Teen Drinking Health & Special Psychology

It isn't just the soaps. However, the soaps are a wonderful collection of some of the worlds worst people. Lying, adultery, murder, drinking, drug-use, robbery...provided to your living room for an hour each day. NICE!

I look back to what shows where on when I was a child. The number 1 tv show for a few years when I was growing up was "The Waltons". Not a whole lot of drinking, adultery, murder or drug-use in each episode. Would it ever be a number one today? I don't think so. For that many children in a show there definitely wasn't enough "back talk" or insulting of parental figures. That seems to be mandatory now. The kids weren't doing drugs or trying to have sex with all the other kids...so that is pretty boring. There was way too much of people trying to help their neighbors or each other to be successful in todays world of keeping up and surpassing the "Jones's".

When I turn on daytime tv and get introduced to some of the finest humanity by Jerry Springer, Rikki Lake, Maury Povich, etc... I almost want to go have a drink.

I think tv has done a good job of taking cigarettes out of most of the shows. If you go back and take a look at 60's or 70's tv, I am surprised that babies weren't born with a cigarette in their hands, as they seemed to be the only ones not smoking. Drinking is still legal, but it is becoming nearly illegal to actually do it outside of your house. TV is slowly coming around to that in their programming, but it will take a while. What I can say is that some of the drinking icons are not being reproduced. Dean Martin, the cast of MASH (drinking in every episode, but a good show), really all of the Rat Pack, Beverly Hillbillies (always making 'shine), etc...are really not getting recycled today. Most of the time when I see drinking on tv, it is from a character who is dark and fighting off deamons through a bottle or a bunch of college kids on springbreak in a movie.

All that said, I would happily take the drinking on tv if they could cut the amount of parental disrespect by children, children that are always wise-cracking, parading of the worlds worst humans, celebration of lesbianism and homosexuality, violence as a normal way of life and increase a few more showings of human kindness. IMO