Original article
Tracking and Predictors of Screen Time From Early Adolescence to Early Adulthood: A 10-Year Follow-up Study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2014.11.016Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To examine tracking of weekday and weekend screen time (ST; i.e., television [TV] and computer [PC] time) from early adolescence to early adulthood and to identify social ecological predictors of weekday and weekend ST among boys and girls separately.

Methods

Data were retrieved from elementary schools (n = 59) in Flanders (Belgium). At baseline, 1,957 children (age, 9.9 ± .43 years) and one of the parents filled out a questionnaire on sedentary behavior and individual, social, and environmental variables. After a 10-year follow-up period, six hundred fifty-five 20-year-olds (age, 19.9 ± .43 years) filled out an adapted questionnaire on sedentary behavior, of which 593 contained full data at baseline and follow-up. Multiple regressions were performed to examine predictors (baseline) of ST (follow-up), and logistic regressions were used to analyze tracking of ST.

Results

For boys, a consistent positive predictor of weekday and weekend TV and PC time at follow-up was ST at baseline (p < .01). For girls, drinking more soda at baseline predicted more weekday and weekend TV and PC time at follow-up (p ≤ .02). Some other individual variables also predicted ST in both boys and girls. Tracking was only found among boys; those exceeding the ST guideline at baseline were three to five times more likely to exceed this guideline at follow-up (p ≤ .001). Tracking was not present among girls.

Conclusions

To minimize TV and PC time during early adulthood, interventions for adolescent boys should focus on minimizing ST. For girls, focus should be on healthy eating. However, more research is warranted to confirm these conclusions.

Section snippets

Subjects and procedures

Data were retrieved from the longitudinal eating and activity study conducted from 2002 (baseline) to 2012 (follow-up) in Flanders (Belgium). At baseline, 100 randomly selected schools were contacted, whereas 59 schools agreed to participate. Students from the fifth grade of these 59 primary schools were invited to participate in the longitudinal study (n = 1,957). Children recruited were, on average, 9.9 years (±.43) old at baseline and 19.9 years (±.43) old at follow-up. The detailed

Results

At baseline, 11.60% and 40.50% of the total group exceeded the ST guideline (>2 hours/day) on weekdays and weekends, respectively. At follow-up, 50.80% and 64.20% of the total group (on weekdays and weekends, respectively) exceeded this guideline. More detailed information (i.e., gender-specific results) is provided in Table 2.

Discussion

The present study investigated predictors and tracking of ST during a 10-year follow-up period, resulting in information on the transition from early adolescence into early adulthood, which is a critical period in life. Different predictors, measured at the age of 10 years, emerged for TV and PC time at the age of 20 years. The predictors were different for gender and type of day (weekday vs. weekend). Furthermore, the tracking results were only significant for boys, and ST was found to be most

Acknowledgments

The study was presented as an oral presentation at the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Conference 2013, Ghent, Belgium.

References (41)

  • J.P. Rey-Lopez et al.

    Sedentary patterns and media availability in European adolescents: The HELENA study

    Prev Med

    (2010)
  • G. Vicente-Rodriguez et al.

    Television watching, videogames, and excess of body fat in Spanish adolescents: The AVENA study

    Nutrition

    (2008)
  • I. De Bourdeaudhuij et al.

    Relative contribution of psychosocial variables to the explanation of physical activity in three population-based adult samples

    Prev Med

    (2002)
  • Letter to the editor: Standardized use of the terms “sedentary” and “sedentary behaviours”

    Appl Physiol Nutr Metab

    (2012)
  • M.S. Tremblay et al.

    Systematic review of sedentary behaviour and health indicators in school-aged children and youth

    Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act

    (2011)
  • T.S. Olds et al.

    Descriptive epidemiology of screen and non-screen sedentary time in adolescents: A cross sectional study

    Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act

    (2010)
  • S.L. Francis et al.

    Tracking of TV and video gaming during childhood: Iowa Bone Development Study

    Int J Behav Nutr Phy

    (2011)
  • M.S. Tremblay et al.

    Canadian guidelines for sedentary behavior to the intention of children and youth

    Appl Physiol Nutr Metab

    (2011)
  • Vlaamse consensustekst in verband met evenwichtige voeding en beweging, ten behoeve van zorgverstrekkers

    (2012)
  • R.R. Pate et al.

    Sedentary behaviour in youth

    Br J Sports Med

    (2011)
  • Cited by (42)

    • Association of mentally-active and mentally-passive sedentary behaviour with depressive symptoms among adolescents

      2021, Journal of Affective Disorders
      Citation Excerpt :

      Obesity is associated with depressive symptoms (Köhler et al., 2018; Mannan et al., 2016) and has been suggested to mediate the association between types of sedentary behaviour and depressive symptoms (de Jong et al., 2013). Lastly, sedentary behaviour has a moderate tracking during adolescence, thus, higher sedentary behaviour during early adolescence is associated with a higher sedentary behaviour during mid-adolescence (Biddle et al., 2010; Busschaert et al., 2015). This can be a pathway linking sedentary behaviour during early adolescence to later depressive symptoms.

    • Screen-based behaviors in Australian adolescents: Longitudinal trends from a 4-year follow-up study

      2020, Preventive Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, these increases differed according to the adolescents' sex. Our findings are consistent with other studies (Bucksch et al., 2016; Twenge et al., 2019; Busschaert et al., 2015), that also show that boys increased their total screen time more than girls. Boys increased time using electronic-games, while this decreased in girls.

    • Tracking of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Systematic Literature Review

      2019, Journal of Adolescent Health
      Citation Excerpt :

      The only study using objective methods to assess both PA and SB had a moderate methodologic quality score of 78.9% [12]. One study [21], reporting solely on screen time as a surrogate measure of SB, was deemed to have a high methodologic quality score (89.4%). As there was considerable heterogeneity of the data in terms of analysis methods, age of adolescents and adults participating in the studies and length of follow-up, statistical pooling of the results were not possible.

    • Longitudinal Sedentary Time Among Females Aged 17 to 23 Years

      2019, American Journal of Preventive Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      The studies that have evaluated youth and adults’ longitudinal sedentary behavior are largely atheoretic, with few associations found,13–15 or focus mainly on associations of sedentary time and adiposity.14,16,17 Of studies that used a theoretic basis for selecting predictors of longitudinal sedentary behavior, most have employed socioecologic models.18–20 High BMI was associated with greater sedentary time in young adult women,20 but other studies found it was not in adolescent girls.18,19

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Conflicts of Interest: None.

    View full text