BACKGROUND Early sexual initiation is an important social and health issue. A recent survey suggested that most sexually experienced teens wish they had waited longer to have intercourse; other data indicate that unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are more common among those who begin sexual activity earlier. The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested that portrayals ...

Bangladesh has made significant social, economic, and health progress in recent decades, yet many reproductive health indicators remain weak. Access to television (TV) is increasing rapidly and provides a potential mechanism for influencing health behavior. We present a conceptual framework for the influence of different types of TV exposure on individual's aspirations and health behavior throu...

Introduction Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an intense, prolonged and sometimes delayed reaction to extremely stressful events such as natural disasters or man-made calamities, characterised by persistent hyperarousal, reexperiencing of images of the stressful event and avoid­ ance of reminders (1). The disorder can become chronic and disabling with delay in treatment (2). PTSD can al...

Imagine a computer plugged into your television at home or in a foreign hotel. In the morning, it can barely transcribe one out of two words correctly, but by evening, it can provide a largely correct transcript of the evening news show, based on what it learned during the day from the TV. This seems like the core of familiar science fiction shows, but the research described here brings this vi...

OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of overweight in a sample of urban American Indian adolescents and identify associated behavioral, personal, and socioenvironmental factors. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS Participants were 246 American Indian boys and girls from the Saint Paul-Minneapolis metropolitan area of Minnesota who completed classroom surveys and anthropometric measurements as part of ...

Background Visual impairment is a significant loss of vision. It has an impact on the prosperity of different countries. It has been difficult to plan preventive measures against visual impairment due to the scarcity of data about the extent of the problem. Objectives The study was aimed at assessing the prevalence and identifying factors associated with visual impairment among school-age chi...

BACKGROUND Sedentary behavior is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and cancer morbidity, and watching television (TV) is an important sedentary behavior. The aim of this study is to clarify the association between TV viewing time and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)-related mortality in Japanese adults. METHODS Using the Cox proportional hazard model, we a...

Three studies examined the short-term impact of television (TV) on children's executive function (EF). Study 1 (N = 160) showed that 4- and 6-year-olds' EF is impaired after watching 2 different fast and fantastical shows, relative to that of children who watched a slow, realistic show or played. In Study 2 (N = 60), 4-year-olds' EF was as depleted after watching a fast and fantastical educatio...

BACKGROUND Time spent watching television affects multiple aspects of child and adolescent health. Although a diverse range of factors have been found to be associated with young people's television viewing, parents and the home environment are particularly influential. However, little is known about whether parents, particularly those who are concerned about their child's television viewing ha...

OBJECTIVES: To examine the associations of demographics, rules associated with television-viewing, and physical activity with daily screen time (including television, non–school-related computer use, and video games) in children and adolescents. METHODS: We analyzed data from a telephone survey of 7415 youth aged 9 to 15 years from the YouthMedia Campaign Longitudinal Survey. We used logistic r...