Many teens and college students have no problem chronicling their sexual and drug exploits on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook -- until, of course, it costs them a job opportunity.
Interventions to dissuade teens from risky behaviors on MySpace and other social networking sites may be effecttive, new research suggests.
But what if their first personal warning didn't come from a potential employer, but from a helpful doctor?
That was the question pediatrician Dr. Megan Moreno sought to answer when she e-mailed 95 inner-city 18- to 20-year-olds to warn them about the potential problems their MySpace profiles might cause.
"A lot of them, I don't think they realized that anyone beyond their friends would even be interested in this information," said Moreno, who at the time of this research was a fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Researchers studied both the frequency of sexual and drug references in young people's MySpace profiles and what happened when Moreno warned them that they should not post such sensitive information online.
What they found, according to Moreno, was that reaching out to teens individually may help them change their behavior online and, she hopes, ultimately help improve their behavior and care for their health in real life.
Source: www.abcnews.go.com