Unintentional injury in television programs watched by adolescents

Purpose: Unintentional injury is one of the leading causes of death for youth age 1 to 19 in the United States, and adolescents are known to be heavy users of television. This study assessed injury behavior in television programs popular with adolescents to see what messages were provided.

Methods: The sample included three randomly selected episodes from the top 15 television programs watched by adolescents during the 2004-2005 television season. Three coders conducted a content analysis of the programs to look for behaviors related to unintentional injury, such as wearing a seat belt while driving, wearing a helmet on a bike or motorcycle, and driving while talking on a cell phone.

Results: Over half of programs (58%) showed people riding in cars. However, for the 69 incidents of car riding, only 18% of drivers were clearly shown wearing a seat belt. High school and college age drivers were more likely to be shown wearing a seat belt than adult drivers (p=.005), and Whites were more likely to be shown wearing a seat belt than African Americans (p=.016). Coders noted four incidents of bike riding which appeared in 3 episodes (7% of all shows). Three of four bikers were wearing a helmet. Motorcycle riding appeared in 4 shows (9%). Of the five incidents of motorcycle riding, three riders were wearing a helmet (60%). For all incident types, only 3% (6/219) resulted in some sort of injury.

Conclusions: Mixed messages are shown on television programs watched by adolescents regarding injury prevention behavior.