SCREAM TIME
Call for new film categories to shield impressionable kids
CHILDREN are being allowed into movie screenings far too graphic for their ages, a child safety group warns.
It has prompted a call to update Australia’s movie classification system to create narrower age categories that are enforceable by law to stop impressionable children being exposed to violent or sexualised content.
Children and Media Australia chief executive Barbara Biggins said some recently released films that were classified as PG or M – which are advisory guidelines that do not stop young children watching them – were inappropriate for many kids.
Under the group’s proposal, the current rating system – which has not changed since the 1990s – would be replaced with five age categories from ages 5, 9, 12, 16 and 18+.
Age restrictions from 12 onwards would be legally enforced to prevent young children seeing films intended for teenagers and adults.
It is also calling for scary content to be considered as part of the rating system.
Ms Biggins said several popular recently released films, all rated M, should have been banned for children under the age of 12, including The Batman, Spider-man: No Way Home and The Matrix Resurrections.
Some Pg-rated films, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife, should also have been restricted, she said.
Children and Media Australia president Elizabeth Handsley, also a professor of law at Western Sydney University, said an “evidence-based” rating system was needed that considered children’s development.
“The main thing is violence, particularly at the M level and even at
MA15+ because parents can take their young children if they want to,” Professor Handsley said.
“It’s not that it makes children violent themselves but it can desensitise them to violence and foster an attitude that violence is an appropriate way to resolve conflict.
“It can also give children an inflated view of how much violence and aggression there is in the world around them and they can develop an overly scary view of the world.”
She said similar systems to the one proposed by her organisation were in place around the world, including in the Netherlands.
“They’ve got a good system to make sure their scheme keeps up with developments in science and they review it regularly,” Professor Handsley said.
The federal government reviewed the classification system in May 2020, but did not release the findings.
A Communications Department spokesman said the government had “already progressed key elements of media sector reform, including enacting the Online Safety Act”.
He said state and territory ministers had to be consulted on any proposed changes to the classification system.