Abstract
Sedentary screen-time is an increasingly prevalent behaviour, associated with a range of adverse health outcomes. Sedentary time and screen-use increase during adolescence, making this age group a prime target for behaviour change interventions. Better understanding the context in which sedentary screen-behaviours occur is important for ensuring future interventions have maximum impact. This study aimed to describe the prevalence of adolescents' sedentary screen-time in the after-school and weekday evening periods, and to examine associations between contextual factors (location within the home and who they were with) and after-school/evening screen-time. Time that UK adolescents (N=204, aged 11 or 12years, 61.4% girls) spent using various screens was measured using a detailed three-day time-use diary completed at home. Adolescents reported the start and end time for each screen-based activity, where they were, and who they were with. Weekday (Monday-Friday) data were analysed with a focus on the after-school (3-6pm) and evening periods (6-10.45pm). Young adolescents spend around a third of their weekday evening leisure-time using screens, with boys engaging in slightly more screen-use than girls. The majority of after-school and weekday evening time at home was spent with family or siblings, with less than 1% spent with friends. Adolescents who spent more time alone after school reported greater screen-use. Greater time spent at home, in the lounge (living room) or bedroom was associated with greater screen-use. These findings highlight the value of devising family-based health-promotion interventions which target after-school/leisure-time screen-use in an effort to reduce young adolescents' sedentary recreational screen-time behaviours.
Highlights
Sedentary screen-time is an increasingly prevalent behaviour, associated with a range of adverse health outcomes
Screen-use increases as children transition to adolescence (Pearson et al, 2017), with one British study showing weekly screenuse to increase between age 10 and 13/14 from 8.1 to 15.2 h in boys and 6.1 to 15 h in girls (Atkin et al, 2013), and it tracks modestly into adulthood (Biddle et al, 2010) making this age-group a prime target for health promotion interventions
Research shows that the number of televisions and having a television in the bedroom (LeBlanc et al, 2015) are associated with increased television viewing, and that television viewing can displace other activities and social interactions (Vandewater et al, 2006), little research has documented the context in which various screen-time behaviours occur, where and with whom an adolescent is using screens
Summary
Sedentary screen-time is an increasingly prevalent behaviour, associated with a range of adverse health outcomes. This study aimed to describe the prevalence of adolescents’ sedentary screen-time in the after-school and weekday evening periods, and to examine associations between contextual factors (location within the home and who they were with) and after-school/evening screen-time. Greater time spent at home, in the lounge (living room) or bedroom was associated with greater screen-use These findings highlight the value of devising family-based health-promotion interventions which target after-school/leisure-time screen-use in an effort to reduce young adolescents’ sedentary recreational screen-time behaviours. This study aimed to describe the prevalence of adolescents’ sedentary screen-time in the after-school and weekday evening periods and to examine associations between contextual factors (location within the home and who they were with) and adolescents’ after school screen-time
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