Teen profiles on MySpace rife with references to sex, alcohol use and violence

Shawn Doherty  —  1/06/2009 9:16 am

Want to visit the wild Web world of Madison adolescence? Np! (No problem!) Log into MySpace and type in a local zip code.

A browse through the Web pages and social lives of local teens is a virtual visit to their messy bedrooms -- full of blaring music, colorful posters, gossip, and, in this age of exhibitionism spawned by cell phone cameras, hundreds and hundreds of photos.

Only keep scrolling through the photos, and you'll see Madison girls posing in underwear and their guy friends standing in front of beer cans piled up like trophies from last week's New Year's parties.

Like adolescence itself, the MySpace pages of Madison kids offer a confused mix of rainbows and hearts, poems about love, dreams about the future, philosophical musings about the nature of being, and obscene photos and profane boasts about sex, drugs, alcohol, and even violence.

Madison teens and their Web pages fit the norm, according to new research published in this month's issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. More than half of teenagers who use the social networking online site MySpace had references to risky behaviors -- including sex, alcohol and drug use, and violence -- on their Web profiles, according to Megan Moreno, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and Public Health.

The report examined 500 MySpace profiles to see how young people use the Internet to present themselves to their peers. This research, Moreno said, is the first in-depth survey of risky behaviors reported by adolescents online. Prior public health studies of such trends focused on adolescents interviewed in schools, communities and clinics. Moreno lead the study while a fellow at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Among the findings reported in the study:

• 37 percent of the MySpace profiles mentioned alcohol use
• 24 percent referenced sexual behaviors
• 41 percent talked about substance abuse
• 14 percent alluded to violent behaviors

The MySpace users cited in the study identified themselves as being at least age 18. However, Moreno and the other researchers discovered that many of the users were actually much younger and claimed to be 18 only to avoid security restrictions.

Over the past several years, teenage use of networking sites such as MySpace and its main competitor, Facebook, has exploded. Nearly 200 million Internet users worldwide now have MySpace accounts, with an estimated 25 percent of users younger than 18.

Teens use the free sites to socialize and to try on different identities.

"The Web is almost perfectly designed to accomplish the two main goals of adolescent development," Moreno said. Many create an idealized picture of themselves on their home pages, complete with customized blogs, videos, photo albums and music.

"Never before have we seen teens go through these developmental struggles in such a public way. Now their search for identity is published, public and permanent," she said.

Madison teenagers are swept up in the Web revolution along with everybody else. These days, says Jacob Oen, a 16-year-old junior at Malcolm Shabazz High School in Madison, a networking site is as "socially necessary" as having a telephone was for his parents when they were teenagers. It is the main way teens plug into friends and the latest gossip. "Computers have become extensions of ourselves," Oen said.

Some of his peers -- though not his close friends -- Oen said, devote their pages to boasting about their latest exploits.

"In some circles, I see a lot of drug references and bragging about sexual activities. You know, who has done what with whom," Oen said. "What do you expect? It's high school!"

Cosette DeChant, a junior at Edgewood High School, now uses what she considers the more sophisticated networking site Facebook to keep in touch with friends. She scoffs at her former middle school days on MySpace. "MySpace is getting really kinda trashy," she said. "There's a lot of young 12-year-old girls posing as 18-year-olds in risque clothing and making out with boyfriends. It almost gets to be a competition among girls of who can put the sexiest picture in and get the most attention."

Boys like to show off on the sites, too, she said. "I have this guy friend who's not a player at all," DeChant said. "But there's this picture of him on the Web with some girls in a hot tub with his thumbs up."

Just how much of this self-reported behavior is teenage bravado and how much is real is unclear, Moreno said. She hopes to clarify that in further research. But online references to drinking and sex become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, she said. "When 14- and 15-year-old kids go on the Web, and on every other MySpace they read brags about these behaviors, it makes them seem like the norm. Like everyone is doing it," she said. "And so they'll start to be influenced by that and join in."

Local MySpace profiles offer ample evidence of the trends described in Moreno's research. They also offer ample evidence of how teens are both the same and much different than past generations.

There is the timeless restlessness of adolescence. "Madison (in my opinion) is superboring & lame," complained one local teenager on her home page. "In the winter there's nothing to do. Ucrazy to go sledding/ice skating/snow man making or fighting in -20 weather cuz here in Madison it gets cold. & in the summer ooh whoopee lets go to the pool. it gets lame after awhile."

And there is the familiar longing for romance. One Madison teenager provided a long list of things her "perfect bf" would do on her home page, including "Kiss her in the pouring rain" and "tell her she looks beautiful."

But that same dreamy girl wrote a blog where she boasted about how she and her friends act with sexual partners: "[We] don't just kiss, we make out; [We] don't just foreplay, we f---." And in her album of photos she included a close up of her thighs in a tight skirt, which attracted plenty of sexually explicit comments. "Ha you little whore," wrote one. "Godaddddddddddamn u got nice legs n a booty on u," wrote another.

The potential for sexual predators to target teens with these kinds of Web pages has long been a concern of researchers and public health officials like Moreno. But now a new concern is surfacing. Increasingly, Moreno said, colleges and employers are searching the networking sites to screen applicants. In a companion study, Moreno and researchers found that a simple e-mail message from a pediatrician persuaded some teenagers, especially girls, to remove references to sexual behavior from their Web pages.

Parents say that they also worry about just how genuine young identities and relationships created on the Web can be. Jacob's mother, Denise Oen, says she is realistic about the hectic schedules most teenagers have these days. Maybe the only time they can socialize is sitting in their rooms alone tapping on their laptops between soccer practice and violin lessons. But she wonders about the quality of connections made among kids who sometimes tally hundreds of "friends" or Web acquaintances.

"I was on the telephone when I was your age until my parents told me to get off," she told her son Jacob recently. "Were we more connected? Was it more real? I don't know."

On the other hand, she said, there is no going back to those days. In fact, she uses Facebook herself.

---

A MySpace intervention

As exploding numbers of young people rely on the Internet to try on new identities and socialize, parents, public health and law enforcement officials worry the children could become prey to cyber bullies and sexual predators.

Another concern is that increasing numbers of colleges and employers have started to plumb social networking sites for information about applicants. Adolescent stupidity could, years later, damage future plans.

Alarmed by her findings that 54 percent of MySpace accounts set up by teenagers and young adults refer to at-risk behaviors, UW pediatrician Megan Moreno conducted a follow-up study. Researchers honed in on 190 MySpace profiles from one inner-city zip code. All included explicit comments or photos about sex or substance use.

Could a public health Internet intervention curtail these postings?

Yes, according to a companion study published in this month's issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. All it took was a simple e-mail from a doctor to persuade some of the teenagers to remove the revelations of risky sexual behaviors from their Web sites completely, and others to restrict access to the pages.

"Hi," the note read. "I'm Dr. Meg. I noticed something on your MySpace profile that concerned me. You seemed to be quite open about sexual issues or other behaviors such as drinking and smoking. Are you sure that's a good idea? After all, if I could see it, nearly anybody could. That probably includes some people you do not want seeing your profile or who would take things the wrong way. You might consider revising your page to better protect your privacy." The note went on to provide information about sexually transmitted diseases.

Moreno said that the e-mail message is proof that public health officials can take advantage of the Web to target important messages to at-risk teenagers.

Parents must also learn to be unafraid of the technology, she said, and explore the new world with their children. Ask to see their MySpace profiles, she said, and talk openly about what kinds of messages and permanent records they and their friends are giving the world about who they are.

Shawn Doherty  —  1/06/2009 9:16 am