LOS ANGELES (The Los Angeles Daily News) - Violence in entertainment and aggressive behavior in children have a closer correlation than secondhand smoke and lung cancer, according to a report to be released by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The child doctors' group also issued a set of recommendations to curb kids' exposure to violent media and said the country should have a simplified, new rating system that helps parents decode what's OK for kids.

Additionally, pediatricians said video games shouldn't award points for killings, music lyrics should be easily available to parents, and doctors should take a child's media history during annual health exams.

"Any parent who goes out to the supermarket and shops for foods for their kid wants to look at the can and know the ingredients. We don't have a rating system which is content based, so we don't know what we're feeding our kids' minds," said Dr. Michael Rich, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School involved with forming the group's policy statement that draws on various studies and reports.

Caroline Rose of Woodland Hills thinks a universal rating system is just the thing parents need to make sense of a world where, as she puts it, her 12-year-old great-granddaughter in Texas thinks all the kids her age should look like pop singer Britney Spears.

"I think it's an excellent idea -- it should be universal," said Rose, who also worries about the violence her great-grandson sees in the media.

"I think it would be helpful -- then the parents don't have to look up what they have to do for their kids."

For example, TV programming gives a TVY7 to shows for kids 7 and above, while TVY7-FV is for kids' shows with fantasy violence, and movies use another system altogether.

But while some industry officials and watchers empathize with parents trying to figure out the alphabet soup of ratings, they say there's no way to corral the media into a tidy thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down system.

"People are looking for a simple answer, or a simpler answer, to something that is incredibly difficult," said Robert Gustafson, director of the Entertainment Industry Institute at California State University, Northridge.

"A problem that has no solution has another name -- it's called a fact, it's a fact of life," he said. "People are looking for a solution to this problem -- there is so much media, so much content (but) lo and behold, they're not finding it."

Gustafson suggested those who want that kind of monitoring should consider reducing the amount of media in their lives.

"Be Amish," he said. "Join the Mennonites, they have a solution: Unplug it; throw it out."

But with children ages 2 to 18 spending an average of six hours and 32 minutes each day using media -- or more, if they're playing video games and listening to music or watching a TV program -- media violence can be hard to click off.

Of more than 3,500 research studies examining the association between media violence and violent behavior, the authors said all but 18 have shown a positive relationship.

In fact, the correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior is greater than other generally accepted links -- including that of environmental smoke and lung cancer -- they wrote.

They said the highest proportion of television violence is found in children's shows, and every animated feature produced in the country between 1937-99 portrayed violence.

And they point to a top-selling music CD by rapper Eminem that captured MTV music awards last year. It includes songs about rape and murder.

"Children are influenced by media -- they learn by observing, imitating and making behaviors their own," they wrote. "Aggressive attitudes and behaviors are learned by imitating observed models."

While parents need to play a part in determining what kids watch, moms and dads find ratings systems difficult to use -- 68 percent of the parents of 10- to 17-year-olds do not use the TV ratings system at all.

And just 10 percent check the ratings of computer or video games their adolescents wish to buy, they wrote.

"The people who need it most, the parents, are saying the system doesn't work for them," Rich said.

Rich envisions a rating system across the media that would break down content in four categories -- violence, sexual, language and risk behavior -- and then further apply age groups for each.

For those like Gustafson who say it's impossible to rate every product being offered to kids, Rich said he agrees -- but someone has to try.

"Nobody's saying this is a perfect solution. ... What we're hoping to do, though, is to give parents and kids better tools to help them make choices that are healthy for them," he said.

"It will hopefully be better and more useful to parents than what we have now. ... Let's put a label on the can."

With three kids and four televisions in her house, Diana Martinez said a better rating system might help, but believes it's up to parents to poke their heads in and monitor what their kids are watching.

"It's beneficial to the parents who are concerned about it, (but) if you're not concerned about it, it's not going to make any difference," said Martinez of San Fernando. "Bottom line is, you need to be a parent with open eyes and open ears. It really comes back to that."

Additionally, the group called for pediatricians to incorporate a child's media history in annual health exams, and further evaluate children when heavy media use is identified.

It further called for parental education, media literacy and other steps.

Copyright 2001 The Los Angeles Daily News. All rights reserved.