Purpose: Excessive screen time has been associated with overweight among adolescents, yet few longitudinal studies have looked at the causality of this association. The purpose of this research was to determine whether excessive Internet use also predicted overweight two years later in a cohort of adolescents in Switzerland.
Methods: Data were drawn from the ado@internet.ch, a longitudinal study of youths from age 14 (T0) to age 16 (T1). Participants were divided into overweight (N=99) and non-overweight control (N=522) groups according to self-reported height and weight at T1. Groups were compared on socio-demographic, academic and Internet use related variables. All variables significant (p<.05) at the bivariate level were included in a logistic regression. Results are given as adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) with 95% confidence interval. STATA/IC13.1 was used for all computations.