Eight percent of adolescent girls were found to be engaged in problematic social media use. Problematic social media use is associated with serious physical and mental consequences. This study aimed to explore the effects of thin-ideal internalization on problematic social media use and the role of selfie-related behaviors and friendship quality.…

Social media provides a context within which adolescents enact key developmental tasks, yet the role technology plays in adolescent dating relationships is a relatively new field of investigation. In-depth interviews were conducted with adolescent girls (N = 70; White: 42.1%, Black: 37.1%, Hispanic or Latino: 4.3%, mixed race: 11.4%) to explore…

The research presented uses intersectionality theory as a lens to study the racial identity construction of four African American young adolescent girls. The findings suggest that race was largely situated in a Black-White discourse for the girls in the study. When limited information was provided in home, school, and community settings, the…

There are strong reasons to assume that early onset of puberty accelerates coital debut among adolescent girls. Although many studies support this assumption, evidence regarding the putative causal processes is limited and inconclusive. In this research, longitudinal data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (N = 2,596) were used to…

We conducted focus groups with girls ages 14 to 17 (N = 43) to study how the dominant discourse of sexual risk shapes young women's understanding of the sexual domain and their management of these presumably pervasive threats. Through inductive analysis, we developed a coding scheme focused on three themes: (a) "types of sexual risk,"…

A randomly selected cross-sectional survey was conducted with 880 youth (16 to 24 years) in Nha Trang City to assess relationships between alcohol consumption and sexual behaviors. A timeline followback method was employed. Chi-square, generalized logit modeling and logistic regression analyses were performed. Of the sample, 78.2% male and 56.1%…

Conducted focus group interviews to explore South African teenage girls' views on and experiences of farm life and to examine their future expectations and life chances. Respondents tended to reject farm life and foresee a future far removed from their working class background. Social divisions and structural location continued to influence their…

According to the reputation enhancement theory, social bonds influence adolescents' delinquent activity indirectly through the reputations they select. Findings from the current study of a school-based sample of female adolescents indicate that bonds to parents affect reputation enhancement beliefs, which, in turn, predict delinquent activity.…