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More than half of teenagers who use the social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace have posted information about sexual behavior, substance abuse/violence and other risky behaviors on their publicly available profiles. And that may attract unwanted attention from sexual predators or jeopardize their future employment prospects

Dr Megan Moreno and her colleagues from the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute analyzed the content of 500 online social network profiles between July and September 2007.

All of the profile owners were 18 years old and living in the United States.

Some 54 per cent of the profiles contained references to risky behaviors. One-quarter of the profiles examined mentioned sexual behaviors while 44 per cent referred to substance abuse. Almost one in three spoke about alcohol use while 14 per cent referred to violence.

The study, published in the current issue of Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that teenagers, whose profiles indicated religious involvement or had references to active participation in a sport or hobby, were less likely to contain any kind of risky information.

“Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?” Moreno said. “Do they not get it? And, if they don’t understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?”

More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.

Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, “It’s important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids,” she said. “They’re here to stay, and they’re not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren’t necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions.”

Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. “Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews,” she said. “Some parents feel it’s a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it’s out there, it’s public.”

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