In one of our recent blogs called “MySpace Affecting our Teens” we mention how teenagers use the popular social network MySpace more for a popularity contest than anything else, which poses a risk. These risks could range from sexual behavior to violence. We all remember the Lori Drew cyberbully case that made headline news in which a teen committed suicide.

How can parents monitor their teenagers behavior when online using MySpace? It’s difficult for any parent to police their teens 24×7 as they have other responsibilities to tend to. The other challenge is that parents may become more complacent when they have teenagers that are 17 to 18 years of age, and may assume they should know better.

“We found the majority of teenagers who have a MySpace account are displaying risky behaviors in a public way that is accessible to a general audience,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, whose studies appear in the journal Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

In one of two studies, Christakis and Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin analyzed 500 randomly chosen MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds in 2007.

Overall, 54 percent of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 percent mentioned substance abuse, 24 percent sexual behavior and 14 percent violence.

Christakis said many teens are unaware of how public and permanent Internet information can be, while parents often do not know what their kids are up to.

We need educate our teenagers about the dangers of the internet, but also provide them the benefits as well. We don’t need another cyberbully case and certainly any public suicide, like the one recently displayed on justin.tv.