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The Role of Sensation Seeking and R-rated Movie Watching in Early Substance Use Initiation

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Abstract

Adolescence is a time of heightened impulsivity as well as substantial exposure to the effects of popular media. Specifically, R-rated movie content and sensation seeking have been shown to be individually and multiplicatively associated with early alcohol initiation, as well as to mutually influence one another over time. The present study attempts to replicate and extend these findings to cigarette and marijuana use, considering several peer, parental, and individual correlates, as well as substance-specific movie exposure, among 1023 youth (mean age 12.4 years, 52% female), using a combination of cross-lagged path models, latent growth models, and discrete-time survival models. Changes over time were associated between R-rated movie watching and sensation seeking, and both individually, not multiplicatively, predicted earlier alcohol initiation. R-rated movie watching (but not sensation seeking) also predicted earlier smoking and marijuana initiation. Parental R-rated movie restriction may thus potentially delay smoking and marijuana initiation as well as adolescent drinking.

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Authors’ Contributions

Authors are Tim Janssen, Melissa J. Cox, Mike Stoolmiller, Nancy P. Barnett, and Kristina M. Jackson. T.J., M.C., M.S., N.B., and K.J. have each made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, gathering, analysis, or interpretation of data and a contribution to the writing and intellectual content of the article. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript for submission.

Funding

This study was supported by grants R01 AA016838 (PI: Jackson), K02 AA13938 (PI: Jackson), and T32 AA007459 (PI: Monti) from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and R01 CA01077026 from the National Cancer Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Tim Janssen, Melissa J. Cox, Nancy P. Barnett & Kristina M. Jackson

  2. College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Mike Stoolmiller

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  1. Tim Janssen
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Correspondence to Tim Janssen.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed assent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, and informed consent was obtained from their parents.

Appendices

Appendix 1

For the current study, three waves of data from the original survey (see in-text citations) were used. For the original survey, five cohorts were recruited between 2009 and 2013. For Cohorts 3–5, the study is ongoing, but data use for the current study is limited to that data that had been completed for all cohorts. Participants completed five semi-annual surveys and a sixth survey 1 year later (three-year interval), followed by a series of quarterly surveys completed in high school (study design was modified at the point of re-funding by NIH). Cohort differences in assessment timing were controlled for in all analyses (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Original data collection timeline. W1, W2, W3 marked in grey for each cohort (color figure online)

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Appendix 2

Fig. 5

Fig. 5
figure 5

Cross-lagged path model as parameterized by Stoolmiller et al. (2010), applied directly to current data. Note: As compared to Fig. 2 in the manuscript, the original cross-lagged path model from Stoolmiller et al. includes second-order autoregressive parameters within panels. Additionally, contemporaneous relations between W2 and W3 parameters were modeled directionally rather than as covariances. Results differ such that instead of residual covariances between W2 indicators being significant and positive, W2 R-rated movies now has a positive effect on W2 sensation seeking after controlling for a negative effect of W1 R-rated movie watching. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001

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Janssen, T., Cox, M.J., Stoolmiller, M. et al. The Role of Sensation Seeking and R-rated Movie Watching in Early Substance Use Initiation. J Youth Adolescence 47, 991–1006 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0742-0

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