The world is currently beaming with the highest number of young people in all of human history. Amongst these young people are an estimated 260 million women aged 15–19 years living in developing countries alone, with an estimated 70% of these adolescent women living in sub-Saharan Africa ( United Nations, 2017). Quite a number of these adolescents suffer and die from causes that could have been easily preventable if the necessary reproductive health services like contraception were made available. This is because, they get involved in risky sexual behaviors, like having unprotected sexual intercourse, which makes adolescent females susceptible to unwanted pregnancies, may result in unsafe abortions, abortion-related complications, and other health and social problems like dropping out of school ( Boamah et al., 2014; Muula, 2008) eventually hampering their life chances.

Nigeria is the seventh most populous country in the world with a population close to 200 million people, is projected to be the third most populated country by 2050, eclipsing the likes of USA and Brazil due to the nation’s high fertility rate and large youth population ( United Nations, 2017). With the population growing at this rate, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) could be difficult for the nation. Like many developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world, a significant number of the population of Nigeria live in rural areas, where the use of health services, especially reproductive health services, is considerably lower compared to the urban areas.

Contraceptives have been identified as a veritable tool in controlling excess population growth, the government and concerned stakeholders in many countries have been promoting the use of contraceptives through various ways, of which mass media is one ( Ajaero et al., 2016; Okigbo et al., 2015). Aside reducing and controlling high population growth, contraception also has other direct health benefits including prevention of unintended pregnancy and subsequent reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity, and reduction in the spread of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) ( de Almeida Mda et al., 2003; Okigbo et al., 2015; Osmani et al., 2015). Studies have found that urban dwellers are more likely to use contraceptives compared to their rural counterparts ( Ajaero et al., 2016; Candia et al., 2017; Gupta et al., 2003). Mass media has been found to play a significant role on the use of contraception and promotion of family planning ( Bankole, 1994; Bankole et al., 1996; Candia et al., 2017; Gupta et al., 2003; Jato et al., 1999; Parr, 2001) and it has been found that mass media based family planning messages have the capacity to raise an individual’s awareness, influence their attitude and increase the uptake of family planning ( Omoera, 2010). Evidence abounds in the various literatures that exposure to family planning messages could inform people’s decision to family planning services including contraceptives. For instance, ( Khan et al., 2012) in a study in Bangladesh found that ever use of contraceptive was positively associated with the exposure to mass media. Also, ( Ajaero et al., 2016) found that access to mass media family planning messages increased the likelihood of respondents making use of family planning.

The importance of mass media in promoting the use of contraceptive cannot be downplayed since studies have already established that it plays an important role in positively influencing an individual’s decision to use a contraceptive. Considering the reported low likelihood of rural people using contraceptive compared to urban dwellers, there is need to focus the role played by mass media family planning messages in the use of modern contraceptive amongst rural adolescents because no nationally representative study has focused on rural adolescents. Hence, this paper examined the role of exposure to mass media family planning messages on the use of modern contraceptive among rural adolescent women in Nigeria, with the findings being helpful in identifying more effective ways to reach out to rural adolescents and eventually improve the use of modern contraceptives among them.

Data were extracted from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), with a representative sample of 38,948 women selected in two stages. The DHS data is collected at an interval of 5 years in many countries across the world by the statistical or population agencies of these countries with technical and financial support from the Measure DHS and USAID. The sampling procedure for the DHS is the use of a two-stage stratified sampling technique. All women in the reproductive age group 15–49 who were either permanent residents of the households or visitors who slept in the households the night before the survey were eligible for the interview, however, for the purpose of this study, an eligibility criterion was set for inclusion in the study. For eligibility for inclusion in the study, women aged 15–19 years of age and residing in the rural areas at the time of the survey were eligible and included which generated a weighted sample size of 4473 women.

Data were analyzed using Stata Version 13.0 at three stages of analysis. Firstly, a descriptive summary of all the independent variables was presented using frequency distributions. Secondly, using the Pearson’s chi-square, the test of association between current use of modern contraceptives and the independent variables was observed and independent variables that were found to be significant at (p≤0.05) were considered for further analysis at the multivariable level. Finally, binary logistic regression models were fitted to examine the role of exposure to mass media on contraceptive use among rural adolescents. This was used because of the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable which was coded; use of modern contraceptive (1) and non-use (0), while the independent variables used in the study; access to mass media family planning messages were all dichotomized into Yes (1) and No (0) for television, radio and Newspaper/ Magazine. The independent variables considered in the study were the region of residence, level of education, household wealth index, religion, and marital status.

In this study, our main tool of analysis was the binary logistic regression based on the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey data, and the study examined the role of mass media in the use of modern contraceptives among rural adolescents. The study was informed by the fact that young people, especially adolescents in rural areas, are at a greater disadvantage in accessing healthcare compared to their counterparts in urban areas, they also seem to have limited access to mass media information and messages. It was found that hearing about family planning on radio, television and newspapers or magazines in the last few months was associated with the use of modern contraceptives among these adolescents, which is consistent with the finding that the common source of information on family planning in Ghana is radio and television Boamah et al. (2014), also with studies like Gupta et al. (2003) where it was found that women’s exposure to behaviour change communication (BCC) messages was significantly associated with increased contraceptive use. This association between exposure to radio family planning messages could be explained by the fairly ubiquitous nature of radio in Nigeria, especially in the northern part of the country. Even after controlling for the effect of other socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the adolescent women, it was still found that hearing about family planning messages on radio and newspaper or magazine in the last few months was associated with the use of modern contraceptives, this result echoes the result from the work of Jacobs (2016) in West Africa, where a positive relationship was also found between family planning message exposure and use of modern contraceptive among adolescents in Senegal and Burkina-Faso. The findings of this study are furthermore consistent with the findings of Khan et al. (2012) where a positive significant association was found between exposure to mass media and ever use of modern contraceptives.

A number of other socio-demographic variables were also found to be significantly associated with the use of modern contraceptives among these rural adolescent women. Education level and region of residence of the women were the other variables found to be significant with the use of modern contraceptive. The findings on education are consistent with findings in the literature ( Ajaero et al., 2016; Khan et al., 2012; Osmani et al., 2015; Yidana et al., 2015). In most of these studies, a dose-response sort of relationship was found between education and use of contraceptive especially the modern methods.

This study is focused on exploring the role of exposure to mass media family planning messages on the use of modern contraceptives among rural adolescent women in Nigeria. Modern contraceptive use among these women was found to be influenced by exposure to family planning mass media messages especially from radio and newspapers/magazines even after controlling for the effect of other socio-economic and demographic characteristics of these women. Hence, this study has been able to point to the important role played by mass media in fronting information on the adoption of modern contraceptives in rural context by providing information mediums of family planning message dissemination that are needed to effect attitudinal and behavioral change among adolescent women. It is also important to note that this group of people is now drifting away from getting information from radios and newspapers to mobile phones, through such mediums as Facebook, SMS, Twitter and Instagram due to the affordability of smartphones and internet services even in rural areas. This could provide a cost-effective alternative method of disseminating this information to a far-reaching effect in the lives of these adolescents. In developing family planning programmes, residence categories, language, and means of information dissemination should be of utmost consideration.

The Cross-sectional research design for the data collection makes it impossible to infer causality in any way. Therefore, it might be difficult to establish causal factor of contraceptive use in relation to family planning messages through the mass media.

The 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (N-DHS) dataset used for this study is available online from the DHS website: https://dhsprogram.com/data/dataset/Nigeria_Standard-DHS_2013.cfm?flag=0 under the ‘Individual Recode’ subsection

Data can be accessed by applying through the DHS website. Please see their data access help page for information.