Warned, Teens Clean Up MySpace Profiles

Cautionary Email From "Dr. Meg" Prompts Many To Remove Sex, Drug Talk, Boost Privacy

(AP)  Many teenagers cleaned up their MySpace profiles, deleting mentions of sex and booze and boosting privacy settings, if they got a single cautionary e-mail from a busybody named "Dr. Meg."

The e-mail was sent by Dr. Megan Moreno, lead researcher of a study of lower-income kids that she says shows how parents and other adults can encourage safer Internet use.

Her message read in part: "You seemed to be quite open about sexual issues or other behaviors such as drinking or smoking. Are you sure that's a good idea? ... You might consider revising your page to better protect your privacy."

Parents, and even doctors, who care for adolescents "should feel very comfortable looking up" their children's or patients' profiles on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, said Moreno, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It's not creepy or an invasion of privacy, she said, but more like reading posters on their walls or slogans on their T-shirts.

Young people don't consider the consequences of posting their drinking habits and sexual behavior, Moreno said. Several wrote back to "Dr. Meg" saying they had no idea their pages could be viewed by anyone. Such social networking sites have privacy settings, but they're not always used.

The sites can be a window into a teenager's world.

"People who work with teens often have this idea that teens are hard to reach," she said. But many young people publicly post their hobbies and interests on MySpace or Facebook and expect people to look. "It can be a great icebreaker," she said.

The study, published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, shows adult supervision of MySpace can raise adolescents' awareness of how accessible their pages are, she said.

The researchers first located 190 MySpace public profiles in a single urban ZIP code, randomly selected from the 10 U.S. Census areas with the lowest average income because researchers wanted to target adolescents who might have less access to doctors. Moreno said she could not reveal the city because of privacy restrictions set by a study review board.

All the users said on their profiles they were 18 to 20 years old and their pages included three or more references to sex, drinking, drug use or smoking.

Half were sent the "Dr. Meg" e-mail; the other half weren't contacted.

After three months, 42 percent of those getting a "Dr. Meg" e-mail had either set their profiles to "private," meaning only people they'd chosen as MySpace "friends" could view it, or they removed references to sex or substance use. Only 29 percent of those in the group who had not been contacted by Dr. Meg made such changes over the three-month period.

Moreno said the results suggest the e-mail intervention had a positive impact on "the hardest-to-reach teens, which gives us great hope that a similar intervention could be used to reach teens as a whole."

In a separate study, Moreno and other researchers looked at 500 randomly selected MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds nationwide and found that more than half contained references to risky behavior such as sex, drinking and violence.

"The ones to me that were most surprising and most worrisome were the sexual references," said the doctor. "We often found males and females describing the circumstances around the loss of their virginity. Females would describe things males could do" to have a better chance of having sex with them. "They'd say, 'I like a guy who brings me flowers and takes me to dinner and (if you do that) I might consider having sex with you."'

Kids decorate their pages with beer logos, marijuana leaf icons and Playboy bunnies. Those counted in the research. But typically it was bold references in the teenagers' own words that researchers found.

"Clear and concise language: 'I got drunk last Friday,"' said Moreno, who is a 35-year-old mother of a baby and a toddler. She said she'll try to stay involved with her kids' computer use as they grow up.

Teenagers who refer to risky behavior on their MySpace pages put themselves at risk of online harassment or solicitation for sex, Kimberly Mitchell of University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, who wasn't involved in the studies, wrote in an accompanying editorial. They also may jeopardize future job prospects.

But social networking sites also give teens a chance to develop their identities, become independent and get support from friends.

"It is time to use the benefits offered by social networking sites to reach youth, perhaps in new and creative ways that were not available prior to the advent of these sites," Mitchell wrote.

[cbsjb1954]

Kids also don''t know that prospective employers can look up their profiles & see stuff that''s totally, like, you know, related to a job...

[ofbyfor3]

Yes liberals, we need to go back to the "shame factor" and finger pointing way of doing things. There are "absolutes" in life - face it.

Posted by sblake63 at 11:10 AM : Jan 06, 2009

I consider myself to politically be a liberal, but I am against this ''parents'' should be their kid''s friends'' philosophy. A few years ago I was in a fast-food restaurant and there was a girl, about 1-4 years old screaming at the top of her lungs.

I didn''t say anything (although I think that the restaurant management should have), but the mother saw me making a face about the situation and totally went off on me. When I sais that maybe she should have done something about her daughter''s behavior, she threatened me.

I left the place and drove to another store. When I left that store, I found that she had followed me there and was confronting me and threatening me. I had to have CVS call the police.

Result is that too many parents can''t deal with the fact that their kids need discipline. They do NOT need you to be their best buddy!

[ofbyfor3]

Yes liberals, we need to go back to the "shame factor" and finger pointing way of doing things. There are "absolutes" in life - face it.

Posted by sblake63 at 11:10 AM : Jan 06, 2009

[heidirockwel]

Ok all of the know it alls under the age of 26. Guess what? Your brains still are not fully functinal yet. You are still children and privacy is to your detriment and definately not a good thing. You are all wanna be adults without the adult maturity and intelligence. Any parent who thinks other wise is whacked. Children need supervision so they don''t fall into the "that won''t happen to me", trap. Wake up people, do your homework, get the facts! Monitor you children closely. Its not a matter of religion, its about self respect and common sense which many children seem to lack a great deal of. Appropriateness
on a public social forum is the issue, you guys don''t get it yet.

[lochlan-2009]

Looks like MySpace is going the way of the DoDo bird. Keep infringing on the usability for your clients, dumbasses, and wonder why copy sites are getting more and more traffic. Who hires these executives for big businesses. Is it a requirement that you have your head up your can in order to be a CEO.

[Cas2dy]

My son is 13 and I won''t even allow him to have an email address, let alone the MySpace page he kept asking me for. He also asked for a YouTube account; you know my answer. I''ll let him know when his personaly has developed/matured enough to have any of that. Both my older kids have pages, BUT they are grwon and married with children of their own AND I am on their Friends list, lol.
My motto is "Big Mother is watching...".

[evian_ycnan]

A nation of meddlesome busybodies and neo-Puritans...

[plplearecrzy]

"Dr. Meg" saying they had no idea their pages could be viewed by anyone. Such social networking sites have privacy settings, but they''''re not always used. The sites can be a window into a teenager''''s world.

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Just goes to show how utterly STUPID most of the kids and their parents are in this country. It''''s like someone has been slipping stupid dust into their drinking water for the last 10 years.

....then again, just look at who got elected twice as president during the last 8 years. Posted by shanev137 at 04:34 AM : Jan 06, 2009

Wait a minute...I believe it was this age group that voted in President Elect Obama

[sandy19731]

Warned, Teens Clean Up MySpace Profiles.....and clean your room while you''''re at it....
Posted by earache4 at 10:39 AM : Jan 06, 2009

You win!

[sblake63]

There was an article on ABC news about kids being concerned about parents wanting to be added as friends to their face book pages. Some of the kids formed groups to band together to protect their "privacy" against their parents. Lmao@ that. Kids have no right to Privacy from parents.

Any parent who allows their son or daughter to be involved in "bad relationships" is one step away from a child abuser. If you see one of their friends cursing or acting out of line - end the friendship. 18 is no magic number. If they are still living with you or dependant on your income - a parent should have "veto power" over all problem relationships and yes even to use a threat of "loss of support" to alter their son or daughter%u2019s behavior.

To those "free reign" live and let live parents, you have given us a generation or two of foul mouthed ill mannered high school shooter types. You need to be stopped somehow....

Hats off to the adults to get involved as mentioned in this article. I would go on to say don%u2019t limit it to what you see on MySpace etc. If you see a child in real life acting out of line, confront the parents in real life. If they are your friends, tell them if they can%u2019t raise their kids right, your are ending your friendship with them.

Yes liberals, we need to go back to the "shame factor" and finger pointing way of doing things. There are "absolutes" in life - face it.

[mill8277-2009]

I think this study is way out of line...our children can see *** anywhere and alcohol as well...they are taught *** at school in the open, not in privacy at home where it should be taught by the parents...the air way need cleaning the stores that show women on the cover with very little on, men with no shirts, the beach people the same way no clothes, not at home in privacy...but when home they can see it all on tv...go after the ones who broadcast it first, clean up the air ways first and allow parents to monitor their own children...

[ofbyfor3]

These kids may not think it''s such a joke when they realize that their potential employers turned them down for jobs after checking up on their online profiles.

The joke will then be on them.

[debie_0202]

children have always been bold, now you see it and hear it on their web pages, we shouldn''t be surprised, it is just different because now their feelings are for everyone to see and hear! They do need to be aware that what they say and do now, can and probable will come back and be viewed by someone you really don''t want to see it!

[mcdonaj3]

It''s nice to know that our tax dollars (grant money) are being well spent. I wonder if Dr. Moreno will be receiving bailout, stimulus, or whatever largess the government is dispensing these days.

[hammy06]

Why do people think their children are going to act any different than they act them selves? As adults we have *** and often drink. We then talk to our friends about this stuff. Our children see and hear us. When will we stop being so uptight about the time we spend taking it easy?

[hologram5]

I do not allow my children to have Myspace pages because it attracts pedophiles and other liberals.


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Posted by lady_organs at 08:53 AM : Jan 06, 2009
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So all liberals are peodophiles? what an idiot statement. Did you do your mandatory reading today? Is that how you ended up here?

[eggy1620]

%u201CI''m just amazed what university researchers will get money to study these days.%u201D Posted by rf35


Academia is running out of topics to research, because there are way too many social science PhD%u2019s being handed out. But you must publish regularly if you wish to keep your job.

[hologram5]

I have said this before, be an active participant in your child''s life and you don''t have to worry too much as they won''t be afraid to open up to you.

[howiepolley]

Sharing intimate thoughts is actually a good thing, but kids have to be aware that any information can be exploited and used against them. Adults should embrace this openness and learn from it. The more we talk and the more we listen the more we will learn.

[excoachken]

Why would you expect kids to use different words "on line" than they do in everyday conversation in their high schools. Parents, teachers, and school administrators should all hold them to a higher standard. Most teenage girls do not even speak up when disgusting dialogue is presented by boys in their company. They seem to have lost a lot of self respect, and it only serves to encourage the clods that used to reserve such language for the locker room.