Cellphone and media usage among adolescent girls of Bhopal city, Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract

Background: Several researchers have reported that mobile phone uses are increasing among adolescents. Better understanding of cellphone and media usage by adolescents would help health care providers in guiding more responsible use of cellphone by teenagers. Aim of the study was to study the level and pattern of mobile phone usages among adolescent girls of Bhopal city, Madhya Pradesh.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among adolescent girls between 14 to 19 years of age studying in schools of Bhopal city. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire contains items related to demographic variables, cellular phone usage and patterns.Results: All the study subjects were using smart phones. Facebook was the most commonly surfed website. Maximum adolescent girls were using smartphones for 2-4 hours in a day. Seventy-eight (69.03%) study subjects preferred text messaging service for awareness about reproductive and sexual health.Conclusions: The cellphone usage can also be exploited to promote awareness about reproductive health among adolescents.

Using mobile phones to improve young people sexual and reproductive health in low and middle income countries: A systematic review

“…The data from the final 11 studies only fit in to three main mHealth applications defined in the Out of eleven studies which were included, five were observational studies [21,23,25,29,30], one was cluster RCT [28], three were mixed-methods study [24,26,27] and remaining two were qualitative studies [20,22]. All these studies included in the review were published within the time period from 2009 to 2017.…”

“…In India, a cross-sectional survey was conducted to study the level and pattern of mobile phone usage among adolescent girls. The study reported that most adolescent girls spent 2-4 hours a day on an average using smartphones and 69% adolescents preferred SMS for awareness about reproductive and sexual health information [30]. months that were sustained after 15 months for both 1-way and 2-way programs.…”

“…Full texts of remaining 70 studies were reviewed to determine if they fulfill the inclusion criteria. Finally, 11 studies were selected and used for the purpose of this review [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram was used to report the study selection process (Fig.…”

“…Ten studies included in this review had client education and behavior change communication as one of the primary mHealth functions to improve young people SRH [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][28][29][30]. Several studies highlighted that mobile phones are an effective tool to deliver HIV prevention educational program [21], maximize reach and access to family planning (FP) information [20], improve reproductive health knowledge [28], sexual health knowledge and ensure safer sexual behavior [24].…”

“…Most studies examined the use of text messaging program to improve SRH services, while one study, used cell phone-based interactive radio show program to understand needs, expectations, and practices of teenagers concerning their sex and emotional life. Most studies reported positive outcomes such as, improved access to family planning information due to automated text-based system, improved reproductive health knowledge among adolescent girls through text-messaging program, willingness to use SMS for awareness about reproductive and sexual health information, and readiness to access a text messaging-based HIV prevention educational program [20,21,27,28,30]. However, only two studies reported unfavorable outcomes such as, restricted use of phones to access SRH information and services and limited success to increase SRH knowledge levels on a mass scale via mHealth campaign [22,23].…”