Social Media Use and Sexual Behavior: Examining the Risks Among Latino Adolescents
Open AccessSocial media, including short message service (SMS) and social networking sites (SNS), are ubiquitous in adolescents' lives, yet little is known about whether these media are associated with increased sexual risk behavior. Latino adolescents, in particular, are at increased risk of negative sexual health outcomes and often have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections compared to their counterparts. Moreover, despite high poverty rates, Latino adolescents are extensive social media users via mobile telephones and Internet connectivity. This dissertation examined social media type (e.g., SMS, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and utilization (e.g., frequency and purpose for use) and the relationship with sexual health risk behaviors (e.g., vaginal sex, number of sexual partners in last 3 months, drug/alcohol use in the last 3 months, contraceptive use in the last 3 months, and condom use in the last 3 months) among 9th and 10th grade Latino youth. Additionally, moderating effects of parental monitoring were examined, as well as developing and testing a multiple domain model predicting sexual risk behavior at 16-month follow-up. A sample of 555 Latino youth ages 13-19 that completed baseline and 16-month follow-up surveys were included in this dissertation study. High frequency SMS (i.e., more than 100 SMS per day) and SMS to a boy/girlfriend once per day were statistically significantly associated with increased sexual risk behavior over a 16-month period, after adjusting for time-varying and time-invariant covariates. However, there was a statistically significant interaction between high frequency SMS and higher perceived parental monitoring, indicating that higher levels of parental monitoring were related to a weaker association between high SMS and sexual risk. Furthermore, there was a direct and indirect association between baseline high frequency social media use and 16-month follow-up sexual risk behavior. Social media is pervasive in Latino adolescents' lives and may be a powerful mode for public health intervention delivery. Although adolescents exchange SMS at high rates, parental monitoring remains vital to parent-child relationships and can moderate the relationship between adolescents' SMS frequency and sexual risk behaviors. Social media provide an excellent platform to strengthen supportive bonds and reach underserved youth to deliver health-related content, but public health practitioners, parents and youth to be practical about the risks of high frequency SMS and other connections to expansive networks, and devise strategies for harnessing social media for good.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.