Feature Story

January 5, 2009

Teens frequently mention risky behaviors on social networking sites

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

About half of teens reference sex, substance use or other risky behaviors on their publicly available online profiles, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, a second article reports that a brief e-mail from a physician shows promise in reducing mentions of sex on social networking Web sites.

More than 90 percent of adolescents have Internet access and about half use social networking sites, according to background information in the articles. "MySpace, the most popular social networking site, regularly ranks among the world's 10 most popular Web sites and includes more than 200 million Web profile accounts, of which 25 percent belong to minors," the authors write.

A total of 270 (54 percent) of the profiles contained references to risky behaviors, including 120 (24 percent) that mentioned sexual behaviors, 205 (41 percent) referencing substance use, 37 percent mentioning alcohol use and 72 (14.4 percent) referring to violence.

The findings suggest social networking sites may provide a new way to detect teens at risk for engaging in unhealthy behaviors, the authors note. "Given the popularity of social networking sites among teens and the high prevalence of risk behaviors displayed there, social networking sites can be explored as an innovative venue to identify, screen and ultimately intervene with adolescents who display risk behavior information," they write.
They then identified 190 MySpace profiles of 18- to 20-year-olds that contained three or more references to sexual behaviors or substance use, including at least one reference each to alcohol and tobacco use.

Before the e-mail was sent, 54.2 percent of the profiles referred to sex and 85.3 percent mentioned substance use. Three months after the e-mail intervention, 42.1 percent of the profile owners who received an e-mail and 29.5 percent of those who did not made protective changes to their profile. Specifically, references to sex decreased to zero on 13.7 percent of profiles in the group that received the e-mail and 5.3 percent in those that did not, and references to substance use disappeared on 26 percent of the intervention profiles vs. A total of 10.5 percent of intervention profiles and 7.4 percent of control profiles were set to "private" at the three-month follow-up.
Given the hazards associated with displaying risk behavior information, parents and health care providers should recognize the importance of social networking sites in adolescents' social lives, discuss social networking site disclosures with both younger and older adolescents and provide Internet safety resources."

"On the other hand, content on social networking site profiles may increase one's likelihood of being harassed or targeted with unwanted sexual solicitation; it may negatively affect one's future professional opportunities; and its images may portray risky health behaviors as normative.

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