Social Media and Sexual Behavior Among Adolescents: Is there a link?

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Abstract

Background

Adolescent sexual risk taking and its consequences remain a global public health concern. Empirical evidence on the impact that social media has on sexual health behaviors among youth is sparse.

Objective

The study aimed to examine the relationship between social media and the change in sexual risk over time and whether parental monitoring moderates this relationship.

Methods

This study comprised a sample of 555 Latino youth aged 13-19 years from Maryland, United States completing baseline and follow-up surveys. Mixed-effects linear regression was used to examine the relationship between social media and the change in sexual risk over time and whether parental monitoring moderated the relationship.

Results

Sexual risk behaviors significantly increased between baseline (T1) and follow up (T2) (mean=0.432 vs mean=0.734, P<.001). Youth sending more than 100 text messages per day had significantly higher sexual risk scores (beta=1.008, P<.001) but significantly larger declines in sexual risk scores for higher levels of parental monitoring (beta=−.237, P=.009).

Conclusions

Although adolescents exchange SMS at high rates, parental monitoring remains vital to parent-child relationships and can moderate SMS frequency and sexual risk behaviors, despite parental influence diminishing and peer pressure and social influences increasing during adolescence.

Related collections

Most cited references 50

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The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families.

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Using social media Web sites is among the most common activity of today's children and adolescents. Any Web site that allows social interaction is considered a social media site, including social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs. Such sites offer today's youth a portal for entertainment and communication and have grown exponentially in recent years. For this reason, it is important that parents become aware of the nature of social media sites, given that not all of them are healthy environments for children and adolescents. Pediatricians are in a unique position to help families understand these sites and to encourage healthy use and urge parents to monitor for potential problems with cyberbullying, "Facebook depression," sexting, and exposure to inappropriate content.

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Dating violence against adolescent girls and associated substance use, unhealthy weight control, sexual risk behavior, pregnancy, and suicidality.

Jay G. Silverman (2001)

Intimate partner violence against women is a major public health concern. Research among adults has shown that younger age is a consistent risk factor for experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence. However, no representative epidemiologic studies of lifetime prevalence of dating violence among adolescents have been conducted. To assess lifetime prevalence of physical and sexual violence from dating partners among adolescent girls and associations of these forms of violence with specific health risks. Female 9th through 12th-grade students who participated in the 1997 and 1999 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (n = 1977 and 2186, respectively). Lifetime prevalence rates of physical and sexual dating violence and whether such violence is independently associated with substance use, unhealthy weight control, sexual risk behavior, pregnancy, and suicidality. Approximately 1 in 5 female students (20.2% in 1997 and 18.0% in 1999) reported being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. After controlling for the effects of potentially confounding demographics and risk behaviors, data from both surveys indicate that physical and sexual dating violence against adolescent girls is associated with increased risk of substance use (eg, cocaine use for 1997, odds ratio [OR], 4.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.3-9.6; for 1999, OR, 3.4; 95% CI, 1.7-6.7), unhealthy weight control behaviors (eg, use of laxatives and/or vomiting [for 1997, OR, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.8-5.5; for 1999, OR, 3.7; 95% CI, 2.2-6.5]), sexual risk behaviors (eg, first intercourse before age 15 years [for 1997, OR, 8.2; 95% CI, 5.1-13.4; for 1999, OR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.4-4.2]), pregnancy (for 1997, OR, 6.3; 95% CI, 3.4-11.7; for 1999, OR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.9-7.8), and suicidality (eg, attempted suicide [for 1997, OR, 7.6; 95% CI, 4.7-12.3; for 1999, OR, 8.6; 95% CI, 5.2-14.4]). Dating violence is extremely prevalent among this population, and adolescent girls who report a history of experiencing dating violence are more likely to exhibit other serious health risk behaviors.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Megan Landry:

Milken Institute School of Public HealthDepartment of Prevention and Community HealthThe George Washington University3rd Floor950 New Hampshire Ave NWWashington, DC, 20052United States1 2029943695mmlandry@gwu.edu

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3906-0601

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): JMIR Public Health Surveill

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): JMIR Public Health Surveill

Journal ID (publisher-id): JPH

Title: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance

Publisher: JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )

ISSN (Electronic): 2369-2960

Publication date Collection: Apr-Jun 2017

Publication date (Electronic): 19 May 2017

Volume: 3

Issue: 2

Electronic Location Identifier: e28

Affiliations

[1] ¹Milken Institute School of Public Health Department of Prevention and Community Health The George Washington University Washington, DCUnited States

[2] ²Milken Institute School of Public Health Department of Health Policy The George Washington University Washington, DCUnited States

Author notes

Corresponding Author: Megan Landry mmlandry@ 123456gwu.edu

Author information

Megan Landry http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3906-0601

Monique Turner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9028-3029

Amita Vyas http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2358-5569

Susan Wood http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8319-612X

Article

Publisher ID: v3i2e28

DOI: 10.2196/publichealth.7149

PMC ID: 5457530

PubMed ID: 28526670

SO-VID: b5e9b77e-706f-4416-996d-84bf313e9e9d

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

History

Date received : 12 December 2016

Date revision requested : 5 January 2017

Date revision received : 10 February 2017

Date accepted : 7 March 2017

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