Longitudinal impacts of pubertal timing and weight status on adolescent Internet use: Analysis from a cohort study of Taiwanese youths

• Published in: PloS one 2018-05, Vol.13 (5), p.e0197860-e0197860
• Main Authors: Tsai, Meng-Che, Strong, Carol, Chen, Wan-Ting, Lee, Chih-Ting, Lin, Chung-Ying
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Analysis; Behavior, Addictive - psychology; Biology and Life Sciences; Body Mass Index; Body Weight; Child development; Cohort analysis; Computer and Information Sciences; Confidence intervals; Female; Females; Humans; Internet; Internet - statistics & numerical data; Internet access; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Males; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; Obesity; People and Places; Physical Sciences; Pornography; Pornography & obscenity; Puberty; Puberty, Precocious - psychology; Regression analysis; Regression models; Research and Analysis Methods; Sexual Maturation; Social Behavior; Statistical analysis; Students; Studies; Teenagers; Video Games - psychology; Viewing; Youth
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197860

To investigate the longitudinal impacts of pubertal timing and weight status on Internet use in adolescents. Three waves of data on a longitudinal cohort of 7th grade students (N = 2430) were retrieved from the Taiwan Youth Project. Univariate and multivariate regression models were applied using crude and adjusted odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) to examine the concomitant impacts of pubertal timing and weight status on adolescent Internet use. The dataset identified 210 (8.7%) students using the Internet for more than 20 hours/week, and 81 (3.3%) were viewing pornographic material online. Early maturing and thin-weight adolescents were at 35% and 46% increased risks of spending long hours on Internet use, respectively. While early puberty was associated with online pornography viewing among males (adjusted OR 1.84, 95% CI 1.04-3.28), early puberty was contrarily a protective factor against online gaming in females (adjusted OR 0.59, 95% CI 0.36-0.96). Early puberty was found to be positively related to adolescent Internet use. Appropriate health education and guidance regarding Internet use should be provided to those with different developing needs.