CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 377Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive HealthSexuality, Behavior, and TechnologyMedia Influence and Health

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 44 of the 44 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Mass media as a sexual super peer for early maturing girls

Brown, Jane D., Halpern, Carolyn Tucker, L’Engle, Kelly Ladin·2005·Journal of Adolescent Health
DOI 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2004.06.003
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Purpose To investigate the possibility that the mass media (television, movies, music, and magazines) serve as a kind of super peer for girls who enter puberty sooner than their age-mates. Multiple studies have demonstrated significant associations between earlier pubertal timing and earlier transition to first sex. Does puberty also stimulate interest in sexual media content that is seen as giving permission to engage in sexual behavior?Methods White and African-American female adolescents (n = 471; average age 13.7 years) recruited from public middle schools in central North Carolina completed two self-administered surveys in their homes about their pubertal status, interest in and exposure to various media, and perceptions of sexual media content.Results Earlier maturing girls reported more interest than later maturing girls in seeing sexual content in movies, television, and magazines, and in listening to sexual content in music, regardless of age or race. Earlier maturing girls were also more likely to be listening to music and reading magazines with sexual content, more likely to see R-rated movies, and to interpret the messages they saw in the media as approving of teens having sexual intercourse.Conclusions The mass media may be serving as a kind of sexual super peer, especially for earlier maturing girls. Given the lack of sexual health messages in most media adolescents attend to, these findings give cause for concern. The media should be encouraged to provide more sexually healthy content, and youth service providers and physicians should be aware that earlier maturing girls may be interested in sexual information.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2004.06.003

Cites

44 of 44 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 43 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 377

Related

Metadata

Authors
Brown, J. D., Halpern, C. T., & L’Engle, K. L.
Affiliations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
Corresponding author
Brown, Jane D.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Adolescent Health
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2005-05
Volume
36
Issue
5
Pages
420-427
ISSN
1054-139X (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.jadohealth.2004.06.003
OpenAlex
W2090837666
Cited by
377
References
43
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 22
FWCI
44.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Adolescent Health (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • Society for Research in Child Development
  • National Institutes of Health (5r01hd038508-05)
  • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD38508-01A)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Media Influence and Health
Keywords
mass media, precocious puberty, sexual behavior, adolescent sexual development, racial differences
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior, Black or African American, Female, Health Surveys, Humans, Mass Media, Menarche, Peer Group, Puberty, Sexual Behavior, Age of Onset, White People

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review