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 "Not all technology use is necessarily harmful," the
study's lead author, Laura Widman, told Reuters Health.
"Although prior research and media attention has focused on the
risks of technology use — like sexting, we found that adolescents
might also use electronic tools to communicate about ways they might
promote their sexual health," she said.
Widman studies adolescent sexuality at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"It's not all about risky behavior. It might be another way that
teens can have these conversations that can be a little bit
awkward," she said.
Widman and her colleagues studied 176 U.S. high school juniors and
seniors. Of the 64 who reported being sexually active, more than
half admitted failing to consistently use condoms, the researchers
wrote in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Those numbers were in line with 2011 federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics. While 47 percent of U.S.
high school students reported having sex, 40 percent of those said
they did not use a condom the last time.
In the current study, students who texted or used other private
electronic technology to discuss either condoms or other forms of
birth control were nearly four times as likely to use the
prophylactics.
The odds of consistently using condoms more than doubled among
students who reported discussing pregnancy or sexual limits with
technology, the study found, although that result could have been
due to chance.
"The technology as an intermediary may alter behavior,"
cyber-privacy expert Mark Rasch told Reuters Health. "In this case,
it seems to be altering it for the good," he said.
"It could also alter it for the bad."
Rasch, who was not involved in the current study, has examined the
dark side of digital communication as a former federal
computer-crime prosecutor and now runs Rasch Technology and Cyberlaw.
A father of two teenagers, Rasch has warned about the dangers of
sexting, or sharing sexually explicit photographs.
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"They're using technology as an intermediary, and the technology
gives them some degree of separation," he said. "Anthony Weiner
would never walk into a cocktail party, drop his drawers and say,
‘Look here.' But Carlos Danger, his cyber doppelganger, might," he
said.
Weiner resigned from Congress after a sexting scandal.
More than nine million U.S. adolescents a year are diagnosed with
sexually transmitted infections, according to the CDC. Research over
the past 20 years shows that teenagers who communicate face to face
with their sexual partners about condoms and other birth control are
more likely to use condoms, Widman said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence recently
called for high schools to dispense condoms along with providing sex
education (see Reuters Health story of Oct. 28, 2013, here:
reut.rs/1bSvCLL).
Widman called for more studies to explore a link between technology
and teen condom use.
"Using technology is another avenue young people have for
communicating about difficult or potentially embarrassing topics,
including sexual health," she said. "We need to understand this much
better than we do now." ___
Source: http://bit.ly/MTSMeu
Journal of Adolescent Health, online Feb. 10, 2014.
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