Media Literacy Practices to Prevent Obesity and Eating Disorders in Youth.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Obesity and eating disorders share common issues related to media use and effects, especially in the USA. Current research increasingly demonstrates that media literacy can address this problem. This narrative review highlights current media literacy-based research for obesity and eating disorder prevention among youth. RECENT FINDINGS: Current research using media literacy techniques to prevent obesity indicates that these interventions improve nutrition outcomes, improve family communication about food, improve critical thinking about food advertisements, reduce sugar and fat intake, and reduce screen use for parents and youth. In addition, eating disorder research reveals that media literacy techniques lead to higher scores of body satisfaction and self-esteem, with lower scores of perfectionism, thinness, and ideal masculinity. There is a need for media literacy-based interventions to focus on family communication to prevent obesity and eating disorders. Furthermore, there should be more focus on identified levels of prevention and specific clinical outcomes.

Youth Perspectives on the Effects of a Family-centered Media Literacy Intervention to Encourage Healthier Eating.

A pretest-posttest field test with control group (N = 189 parent-child dyads) tested a structural model representing youths' (ages 9-14) perspectives to examine the efficacy of a family-centered, media literacy-oriented intervention promoting fruit and vegetable consumption. The intervention facilitated critical discussion about nutrition and media, mentored by the parent. Results showed that youths' increases in fruit and vegetable consumption flowed from parent-child discussion of nutrition labels, which was predicted by child-initiated discussion, critical thinking about media sources, and critical thinking about media content. Multivariate analyses revealed that the intervention was productive for all participating age groups and for all dependent variables. The results suggest that a developmental progression from critical thinking about source to critical thinking about content affects behavior change and can be catalyzed through media literacy education and encouragement to discuss media messages (i.e. practice) with parents.

A Media Literacy-Based Nutrition Program Fosters Parent-Child Food Marketing Discussions, Improves Home Food Environment, and Youth Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables.

Background: Media use is a known contributor to childhood obesity, but encouraging reductions in screen use only partially eliminates media influence. We tested a family-centered, media literacy-oriented intervention to empower parents and children 9-14 years to skillfully use media to reduce marketing influences, enhance nutrition knowledge, improve the selection of foods in the home environment, and improve fruit and vegetable consumption. Methods: A community-based, 6-U program included separate parent and youth (ages 9-14 years) sessions, each of which was followed by a session together in which skills from the individual sessions were reinforced. A pretest to posttest field test with control groups (N = 189, parent-child dyads) tested the intervention's efficacy. Results: Standardized mean differences from the multiple analysis of covariance tests showed that the intervention group demonstrated improvements on parents' use of nutrition labels (0.29), the ratio of healthy to unhealthy food in the home environment (0.25), youth's fruit (0.30) and vegetable (0.25) consumption, parent and youth media literacy skills, and family communication dynamics about food. The largest effects found were for negative parental mediation (0.48) and parents' report of child-initiated discussion (0.47). Consistent but weaker results were revealed for Latinx families. Conclusions: This family-centered approach helped family members practice using media together to make better nutrition decisions without depending on the ability of parents to limit media use. It successfully addressed the often-negative impact of the media on behaviors that increase obesity risk while also cultivating the potential for media to provide useful information that can lead to behaviors that decrease obesity risk.