Newsflash: "Teens divulge risky behavior on social networking sites!"

It's true. It's all over the Internet, this time backed by respected journals.

In retrospect, I'm a little appalled that my initial reaction was somewhere along the lines of "duh." Has it really become so commonplace for kids to post scandalous information about themselves on the Internet that I take it for granted and forget to be scandalized by it at all? Shame on me for not immediately thinking shame on them.

It's easy to become jaded by it all, though, when too much information about too many people is constantly bombarding you from too many directions — unless it's your teen not wearing enough clothes. Or your kid smiling while hoisting a beer or grimacing through a fight caught on video. And unless your kid is in the minority, something of that nature may have popped up on your teen's social networking page, since a recent study indicates more than half of kids have done it.

That's something to be concerned about, distressed even. It's not a headline to ignore, but one a parent should consider, especially when you peel away the obvious and get to the meat of the story:

According to HealthDay, which reported on two studies in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Dr. Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took a more analytical look at the things kids won't tell adults, but are more than happy to post online.

Moreno and her colleagues picked 500 MySpace profiles of people who reported their ages as 18 (54 percent of these pages contained information about risky behaviors).

Then they picked another batch of profiles of risky posters claiming to be ages 18-20 and sent half an e-mail from a physician, which noted the risks of their behaviors, suggested that the information be removed from their profiles and recommended places to be tested for STDs — and 14 percent of those who received the e-mail removed the information.

That has interesting possibilities, particularly if you have a teen who resists confiding in you, then turns around and broadcasts everything to the world.

The information is out there and by now you should have probably already figured out how to locate it. But now maybe it's time to think about how to use the information in different ways, particularly as a teaching tool, rather than evidence in a case for punishment.

When she's not being a journalist, Treena Shapiro is busy with her real job, raising a son and daughter. Check out her blog at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com/Blogs.