Relationship of Media Location to Adolescent Health-risk Behaviors: Gender Differences

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The aim was to explore relationships among the risk factor of peer influence, the protective resource of parental monitoring, location of media use, and the outcomes of health-risk behaviors (smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, age at first coitus, number of sex partners, contraceptive use, and use of alcohol or drugs with sex), and to further explore differences between females and males. This analysis is one component of a longitudinal study of health-risk behaviors in high school-aged adolescents. Following IRB approval and written informed consent of the participants, data were collected either by computer or by mailed paper surveys from 912 adolescents (42.9% males, 47.4% Hispanic/Latino). Peer influence was measured by a 15-item Likert scale with a Cronbach's alpha = 0.90. Parental monitoring was measured using an 8-item Likert scale with a Cronbach's alpha = 0.82. Media use scales were created for this study and summed participants' use (not at all, < 3 hours/day, 3-5 hours /day, > 5 hours/day) of various media (TV with or without cable, fashion or teen magazines, video games, computer with or without Internet, CD, VCR, or DVD player) by location (out-of-home; in-home, but not in room; in-room). Health-risk behaviors were measured using single items from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. Media use outside the home was statistically significantly related, inversely, to parental monitoring, and positively to drinking alcohol (p = .05), and number of sexual partners for females (p = .01); media use outside the home was also statistically significantly related to peer influence (p = .01); and marijuana use (p = .05) among females and males. Media use inside the home (but not in one's room) was significantly related to number of sex partners for females only (p = .05), but none of the other variables were significantly related for either females or males. Media use in one's room was significantly related to peer influence, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and number of sex partners for females; it was also significantly related to contraceptive use for both females and males (p = .05). Among males, in-room media use was significantly inversely related to parental monitoring (r = - .12, p = .05). To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the location of media use among adolescents and it suggests avenues for intervention that may be gender-specific. It also supports previous studies that indicate peer influence as a risk factor and parental monitoring as a protective resource for adolescents' health-risk behaviors. This approach to studying media, by location rather than technology, could be a model for future longitudinal studies where the evolution of media provides substantial measurement challenges.