Study: Sex, Violence Amongst Teen Talk on MySpace

By Elizabeth Landau
(CNN) -A new study finds that 54 percent of teens talk about behaviors such as sex, alcohol use, and violence on the social networking giant MySpace -- presenting potential risks even if all they're doing is talking, researchers said Monday. The study looked at MySpace profiles of 500 people who identified themselves as 18-year-old males and females in the United States. References to risky behaviors included both words and photos, the authors said.
Not all teens who write about risky behaviors in their profiles actually engage in them in real life, said Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, one of the authors of the study, which appears in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
They may instead talk about sex, substance use, or violence because they are contemplating doing those things, or because they want to brag without actually doing what they say, Moreno said.
Even if teens have not actually engaged in risky behaviors but merely brag about them online, this can still affect their future behavior, said study co-author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital.
Those who lie about the behaviors to show off may receive positive feedback from others -- comments such as "that's great" or "I do the same thing" -- that encourage them to actually try out the behaviors, he said.
Apart from that, teens who claim such behaviors are more likely to be victims of bullying and unwanted invitations for sex, he said. In a second study, Moreno and colleagues identified 190 profiles of 18- to 20-year-olds that contained three or more references to sexual behaviors or substance abuse. The authors then made a profile of their own, called "Dr. Meg," from which they sent a single e-mail to half these profiles, warning them about the risky information and offering information about clinical resources.
They found that, after three months, 42.1 percent of the profile owners who received the e-mail -- and 29.5 percent of those who did not -- either removed references to risky behaviors or made their profiles private. "It's really not that MySpace is bad or good. I think the lesson is that it's a tool, and how you use it determines the kinds of outcome you're going to get," Moreno said.
Experts say the bottom line is that parents should get more involved in the online lives of their children.
"I tell parents that they should absolutely create their own MySpace and Facebook page," Christakis said. The study inspired him to create his own Facebook account, and his 10-year-old already wants to know about his "friends," he said.
Follow Story Here