Abstract
Evidence shows that adolescents do not do enough physical activity (PA), which could contribute to childhood overweight and obesity. Studies have shown that both the built environment and social networks could influence adolescents’ PA, but more studies are needed to investigate their combined influence using longitudinal data. We used a stochastic actor-based model analyzing two waves of Add Health data to test if (1) home location has a significant influence on high school student’s friendships, and (2) the neighborhood built environment has a significant influence on high school student’s PA while controlling for friendship networks. The results indicate that students’ PA level emulated peers’ PA levels and students who lived closer together, increased the likelihood of forming friendships. However, the built environment variables that described adolescents’ residential neighborhoods did not show a significant influence on students’ PA dynamics. This study contributes to our understanding of the joint impacts of social networks and home location on adolescents’ friend networks and PA dynamics in urban settings.
Highlights
1.1 Obesity, physical activity, environment, and social network Since the mid-1990s, obesity has been recognized as one of the leading public health problems in the U.S (Flegal et al, 2016)
To demonstrate how the Stochastic Actor Based (SAB) model was applied in studies about the relationship between social network and obesity, we reviewed research articles included in two recently published systematic review papers (Prochnow et al, 2020; Zhang et al, 2018)
Since little research has been conducted to investigate the combined influence of the environment and social network on adolescent physical activity (PA) using longitudinal data, this study aims to integrate the environmental drivers within the social network models to investigate their joint impact
Summary
1.1 Obesity, physical activity, environment, and social network Since the mid-1990s, obesity has been recognized as one of the leading public health problems in the U.S (Flegal et al, 2016). Obesity among adolescents is a serious health issue. Between 2015 and 2016, nearly one-fifth of all U.S adolescents were obese (prevalence rate = 18.5%) (Hales et al, 2017). As obesity and overweight are due to an imbalance of caloric intake and expenditure, the lack of exercise is a major direct cause of unhealthy weight. While exercising provides many physical and mental health benefits (Eime et al, 2013; Janssen & Leblanc, 2010), U.S adolescents do not do enough regular physical activity (PA) (Kann et al, 2018; Troiano et al, 2008). Approximately one-fifth of students spent over 5 h on screen devices (e.g. computers, smartphones etc.) per day (Kenney & Gortmaker, 2017), an activity counterproductive to exercise
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