With the film industry continuing to thrive, more movies produced have been categorized as R rated. The Motion Pictures Association of America, established in 1968, set the standards for film ratings used by parents and teachers to help inform children of what they should watch.

As of now, the age requirement to watch R rated movies is set at seventeen. However, this age restriction has agitated young movie goers in their mid-teen years.

Should the age requirement be changed?

Movies receive their ratings based off of several factors, one factor is the special committee.

This is a group of men and women who view each film and vote on which classification they feel the movie deserves; the group take into consideration what they believe parents would find most appropriate for their children to watch.

Also, the committee takes into consideration if a film contains excessive amounts of foul language, violence, nudity, sexual activity and drug use are used to determine the rating of a film.

Many tend to believe that seventeen and eighteen is a good age to be able to comprehend and be mature enough to handle large amounts of explicit material.

Personally, I believe it should be changed to at least sixteen years of age.

When children reach the age of sixteen society begins to view them as young adults rather than kids.

At sixteen more responsibility is laid upon you, such as driving a car.

Telling teens that they are old enough to be independent and share the road with other drivers, and then going and trying to tell the same teenagers that they are not mature enough to handle explicit content can be quite frustrating.

Because of this, I believe the age to watch R-rated movies should be changed to sixteen