Parents' Biggest Concerns About Movie Content Revealed — and You Might Be Surprised Where 'Graphic Violence' Falls on the List

A new survey about kids and movie content found that parents are more concerned about sex and nudity than they are language and violence.

The Classification & Rating Administration, which provides the movie-rating system that is jointly run by the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, recently released a study titled, "The 2015 Parents Ratings Advisory Study" — an inquiry that provides a lens into the content that parents are most worried about.

The five biggest concerns were, in order: graphic sex scenes, full male nudity, use of hard drugs, full female nudity and graphic violence.

Nielson/Classification & Rating Administration

While 80 percent of parents felt that the current ratings system is accurate, they overwhelmingly said that most forms of sexual content deserve an "R" rating, expressing their overall concerns about a variety of content types.

Eighty percent of parents said that they are extremely or very concerned over graphic sex scenes, with 71 percent saying the same about full male nudity and 70 percent expressing identical qualms about full female nudity.

Hard drugs, too, ranked high on the list, with 70 percent of parents expressing deep concern; 59 percent said that they are extremely or very concerned over expressions of marijuana use as well.

Despite falling lower than the sexual and drug concerns, violence was still something that parents worried about in the survey, with 64 percent expressing qualms about graphic violence and 59 percent about horror violence.

Cartoon violence and action/fantasy violence fell lower on the list, with 31 percent and 37 percent expressing concerns, respectively.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Joan Graves, senior vice-president and chairman of the Classification and Rating Administration, wrote in a recent blog post that the study was conducted by the ratings body to ensure that it is being "consistent and credible in reflecting the concerns of parents across the country when [determining] film ratings."

The survey, which was conducted by Nielson on behalf of the Classification & Rating Administration, included 1,488 parents with children between the ages of seven and 16.

Read more about the methodology and results here.

(H/T: Hollywood Reporter)

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Front page image via Shutterstock.com.

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