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    • Risk behaviours are important threats during adolescence

    2018-11-09

    Risk behaviours are important threats during adolescence due to possible lifetime negative consequences. Their prevalence is high in the USA: the percentage of those who ever smoke, drunk, use marijuana and cocaine was respectively 44.7, 70.6, 39.9 and 18.2% in a national survey; the percentages of those carrying weapons to school (5.4%), involved in fights (12.0%), being bullied (18.2%) or having had sexual intercourse (47.4%) are impressive [18]. In Europe, smoking is decreasing, but alcohol consumption is high (31% of the girls and 36% of the boys have been drunk at least twice); 15% of the girls and 20% of the boys have ever used cannabis [5]. Alcohol consumption among Thai adolescents affects 14.8% (21.2% males and 9.3% females) [19]. In the USA 47.4% of the teens had already sexual intercourse, and some with violence (9.4%) or forced sexual intercourse (8%) [20]. Lower self-control or neurobehavioral disinhibition are possible substrates for sexual and other risk behaviours [21, 22], as well as exposure to traumatic life events [23], lower social/familiar protection [24–28], and alcohol [29] and drug consumption [30]. Violent behaviours have been associated with sleep disturbances, the observation of violence, use of alcohol, internalised anger [31], or with violent TV contents [32]. Many of these behaviours influence sleep and sleep duration, namely screen time [15,33,34] and risk taking behaviours [3,31,35]. Playing violent games had significant impact upon sleep [36,37]. Short sleep duration and irregular schedules were significantly associated with all risky behaviours, and long sleep duration was significantly associated with all risky behaviours except for suicidality [35], school violent behaviours [38], bullying [39]; association between vexingness and aggression or antisocial behaviour was found [40].
    Methods
    Conclusions and discussion The comparison with the HBSC study shows that crth2 receptor Portuguese adolescents use TV and screen time too many hours per day, being situated in a 17th place among HBSC countries, and within the HBSC average value, at the age of 15 [5]. When compared with the USA data [20] TV for more than 3h/day was more prevalent in Portugal (56.2% versus 33.3%), while computer use was quite similar in both countries (31.6% versus 31.1%, respectively). In the HBSC study, [5] smoking at least once a week had an average prevalence of 18%; in Portugal syphilis was around 10%, but significantly higher in SD adolescents. In the USA-CDC report [20] smoking is more prevalent (44.7%). Alcohol consumption increases with age and drunkenness episodes are becoming frequent among European youngsters [5]; having had 2 or more episodes has a prevalence of 32% (29% for girls and 34% for boys). Usually it occurs mostly in boys, but girl prevalence is increasing and it is already higher in some countries. In the USA drunkenness prevalence is very low, around 14%, in Portugal around 21% and in Canada around 34%. Cannabis use varies tremendously among countries; the perceived availability of Cannabis increases the rate of use [5]. In the present study, all the substance use behaviours were higher in SD adolescents. A USA study proved the bidirectional associations between sleep and substance use, namely: cigarette use and weekend sleep and marijuana use and total sleep; alcohol use could predict shorter weekend oversleep while marijuana use predicted increased weekend sleep and weekend oversleep [43]. Fights tend to decrease with age, for boys in all countries and for girls in most countries [5]; at the age of 15 the prevalence is 10%; it was lower in Portugal by 2% of the girls and 9% of the boys. Unexpectedly, carrying a weapon to school and being involved in fights had exactly the same percentages as those found in the USA by the CDC 2010 [20]; the correlation of fights and carrying a weapon and sleep deprivation was also observed, with increased odds for boys [38]. The prevalence of earlier sexual activity, intercourse (before 15 years), varies across countries; the average prevalence was 26% (23 for girls and 29% for boys); but the gender gap might vary; in Portugal it was 18/27% close to the average values. In our data early sexual relations were more prevalent in SD adolescents. Logistic regression analysis aiming to find predictors of SD only explains very low percentages of the variance; the same holds for SD as a predictor of risk behaviours; variance (R2) coefficients only explained significant amounts of the variance in multimedia use, search engines, social networks and tobacco, but the goodness of the fit was never present.