Study: Teen movies getting cleaner

LOS ANGELES - By Jenna Bowman, The Daily Universe, via UWire

Teen movies this summer contain half as much profanity as they did 25 years ago, according to a study done by three BYU professors.

Mark Callister, a professor of communications who co-authored the study, said they expected the research to show an increase of profanity in movies because that seems to be the trend in most other media, such as television and music. "We were really pleasantly surprised to see the number of dirty words steadily going down since the '80s," he said.

The research team viewed 90 top-grossing films in the teen movie genre, 30 from each decade. The 1980s movies contained an average of 36 dirty words per film. The number dropped to 25 per movie in the 1990s and again to 16 instances in movies from the 2000s, Callister said.

The research indicates a decline in usage of profanity but researchers still have no clear understanding of why. "We can't be sure what has caused the decline, but it's possible that public pressure on the studios play a part," said Dale Cressman, a professor of communications who co-authored the study. Media watchdog groups -- such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association -- putting economic pressure on movie makers is another possibility, Callister said.

In addition to recording the number of dirty words in each film, the study noted the demographic of the character who said the word, and which category it fit into. Researchers found 72 percent of dirty words were spoken by males, and that teenage males were "the most dirty-mouthed," according to a news release.