A study of the Relationship between Use of Harmful Media, Smoking, and Drinking among Junior Highschool Students

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Objectives: Adolescent health risk behaviors are typically smoking, drinking, violence, and the use of harmful media. The articles published in the literature are about those behaviors which was individually studied. Teenagers, however, are likely to have those behaviors simultaneously such as smoking and drinking. Also, the use of media and harmful materials are common among adolescents. This study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the relationship of smoking, drinking, the use of harmful media. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis using the data drawn from National Youth Committee's survey of adolescent harmful environment in 2007. The self-reported questionnaires were administered to 7,409 students attending junior high schools between October 10 and November 20. The samples were randomly selected based on strata of geography, schools, and gender. Results: Junior high school students used the harmful media ranging from 13.9 % to 31% depending on the type of media. The most accessed one was adult-only games. The current smoking rates was 5.4% and drinking rates was 27.4%. There are statistically significant relationship between smoking and the use of harmful media, between drinking and the use of harmful media, and between smoking and drinking. The behavioral factors that can predict the use of harmful media based on logistic regression analysis are the grade and smoking. Conclusion: Students were at risk of engaging health risk behaviors as they were getting older. Like other literature, smoking was a significant predictor of adolescent behavioral problems.