Adolescent media use, parent involvement and health outcomes: a latent class analysis approach

ABSTRACT

Media use among early adolescents is nearly ubiquitous and has been associated with important health outcomes such as physical activity, sleep and problematic internet use (PIU). Parent involvement has been recommended as a prevention strategy; it remains unclear how it is associated with media use and health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to develop profiles of media use, parent involvement and health outcomes among adolescents. Early adolescents were recruited to a cross-sectional online survey using the Qualtrics platform and panels. Media use measures included ownership and bedroom use of devices, social media platforms and video games. Parent media involvement assessed media rules and role-modeling. Health measures included physical activity, sleep and PIU. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify distinct profile groups across these three areas. The 1155 participants had a mean age of 13.6 years (SD = 1.1), of whom 49.7% were female, 73.7% were White and 61.1% had parent education with a college degree. We found that most participants owned personal media devices, including smartphones (81.4%), computers (64.6%) and video game systems (58.9%). The LCA identified three distinct profile groups: (1) Active Autonomous Media Users, (2) Young Low-Tech Sleepers and (3) Risky Regulated Media Users. Findings support that media use patterns vary across adolescents, suggesting different education and prevention approaches may be needed. Targeting educational messages to different media profiles may be an effective strategy to optimize productive media use and health.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent
• social media
• latent class analysis
• physical activity
• sleep
• problematic internet use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by Seattle Children’s Research Institute; Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development.

Notes on contributors

Megan A. Moreno

Megan A. Moreno (MD, MSEd, MPH) is a Professor of Pediatrics and an Affiliate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the Vice Chair of Digital Health for the Department of Pediatrics, and Division Chief for General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Dr Moreno is the Principle Investigator of the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT) [email: [email protected]; [email protected]].

Aubrey D. Gower

Aubrey D. Gower is currently a first-year medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She worked as a research specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously completed her bachelors at the University of Washington in Biology and Psychology. Her research has included topics related to adolescent health, screen time and problematic internet use

Daniel Pham

Danny Pham is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington. He completed a research internship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His area of study is biostatistics and informatics.

Qianqian Zhao

Qianqian Zhao (MS) is a Biostatistician at the University of Wisconsin Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics. She has experience in the design and analysis of clinical and pre-clinical studies. Her research interests are in pre-clinical modeling and clinical trials with a focus on oncology, while serving my collaborators in answering their scientific research questions across a broad range of areas.

Jens Eickhoff

Jens Eickhoff (Ph.D.) is a senior biostatistician at the University of Wisconsin Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics. His statistical methodology research is focused on latent variable modeling and includes LCA approaches.