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Many young people who use social-networking sites such as MySpace do not realise how public they are and may be opening themselves to risks, the US researchers claim. But the sites may also offer a new way to identify and help troubled teens.

"We found the majority of teenagers who have a MySpace account are displaying risky behaviour in a public way that is accessible to a general audience," says Dr Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children's Research Institute.

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

Overall, 54% of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviour: 41% mentioned substance abuse, 24% sexual activity

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and 14% violence.

Christakis claims 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. "No one says, 'Whoa! Why are you putting that up there?'" Christakis says.

In a second study, the researchers identified 190 individuals aged 18 to 20 whose MySpace accounts displayed multiple risky behaviours. Half were sent a message from "Dr Meg" from Dr Moreno's MySpace profile.

The message warned about the risks of disclosing personal details online and offered a link to a site with information about testing for sexually-transmitted diseases.

Three months after this single message, many of the young people had withdrawn references to sex and substance abuse and tightened security controls.

"It really provides the opportunity to reach millions of potential at-risk teens and try to modify their behaviours or at least prevent them from disclosing them to the entire world," Christakis claims.

The email was effective at curtailing references to sex, with 13.7% of profiles in the group that received the warning deleting all references, compared with 5.3% of those who were not sent the message.

Christakis says displaying sexual information online can expose a teen to advances from sexual predators. Employers and universities may also check those sites.