Disney movies, a bad influence? Maybe, says Adam Goldstein, assistant professor of family medicine, who recently finished the first published study that examined alcohol and tobacco use in children’s animated feature films.

After reviewing 50 G-rated animated films produced for children in the last 60 years, Goldstein found that at least one character in more than two-thirds of the films used alcohol or tobacco. Or to put it another way, 76 characters smoked for a total of 45 minutes, and 63 characters drank alcohol for a total of 27 minutes.

“The disturbing part,” Goldstein says, “is that none of the films showed any long-term health consequences, nor did they have any verbal messages about the harmful effects of alcohol or tobacco.”

Goldstein also found that good characters used the harmful substances as often as bad characters. Particularly surprising was that films produced in the 1980s and 1990s had just as many, if not more, characters using tobacco or alcohol as films in earlier decades.

Children are influenced by the animated films they watch, Goldstein says. He believes that while it might be unethical for researchers to expose young children to animated films containing alcohol and tobacco use to test the effects, the risks are great enough that some precautions should be taken. Either tobacco and alcohol use should be left out of general-audience animated films, or the harmful
effects should be emphasized, Goldstein says.

For films already produced, Goldstein recommends that labels be put on those containing tobacco or alcohol use, so parents can decide for themselves if their kids should watch the films.