Making teens more media savvy about the subtle pro-smoking messages in movies and other media may reduce their likelihood of smoking, new research suggests.

Media literacy may represent a “promising tool for smoking prevention in this population,” Dr. Brian A. Primack, of the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues suggest.

More than 4,000 teenagers begin smoking each day and programs to curb smoking among adolescents have thus far been largely unsuccessful. Youth exposed to certain messages from the media, such as tobacco ads, are reportedly more likely to start smoking during adolescence than their less exposed peers.

Yet, there are data to suggest that increasing young people’s media literacy by teaching them how to understand, analyze and evaluate various messages from the media, including advertising, may reduce their susceptibility to starting smoking or continuing to smoke.

In the current study, researchers analyzed responses from 1,211 high school students to a survey that assessed the students’ current smoking, potential future smoking and their smoking media literacy, such as the extent to which they agreed that advertisements usually leave out some important information.

Overall, nearly one out of every five students (19 percent) were current smokers and four out of every 10 (40 percent) were categorized as susceptible to smoking at some point in the future. Those who had parents, siblings, or friends that smoked were more likely to be current smokers than were their peers.

Students with higher smoking media literacy, however, were less likely to be current smokers or to be considered susceptible to future smoking than were their peers, the researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

In particular, those who scored above the median score in smoking media literacy, which indicates higher levels of media literacy, were nearly 50 percent less likely to report current smoking than those who scored below the median score. Students who scored above the median were also found to be half as likely as their peers to be susceptible to starting smoking in the future.

Students with higher grades and those who were more aware about the addictiveness of smoking were also less likely to be current smokers, the report indicates.

“Many factors that influence a teen’s decision to smoke - like peer influence, parental smoking and risk-seeking tendency - are difficult to change,” Primack said in a university statement. “However, media literacy, which can be taught, may be a valuable tool in efforts to discourage teens from smoking.”

What’s more, increasing media literacy among adolescents may also have an affect on other health behaviors, in addition to smoking, the researchers note.

“Because media messages have been shown to affect not only smoking behavior but also eating behavior, aggression, sexual behavior, and alcohol use, it may be useful to conduct similar studies to determine whether media literacy may also be useful in buffering harmful health behaviors other than smoking,” Primack and his colleagues note.

Since it may not be possible to reduce every adolescent’s exposure to harmful messages from the media, “media literacy may therefore be a practical and empowering co-intervention,” they write.

SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, 2006.