WASHINGTON — These days, there are virtually no teens who aren’t using social-networking sites to connect with friends and share details of their lives. And the majority of those teens are sharing information publicly that may hurt their chances of getting admitted to colleges or securing a desirable job.

That’s the word out of two studies on adolescent revelations of risky behaviors on MySpace and on reducing the display of those behaviors on MySpace. The studies were conducted by the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington.

For the first study, researchers targeted 500 random teenager profiles on MySpace and found that 54 percent of the teens discussed and/or posted photos revealing sexual behavior, substance abuse or violence. In the study, girls were less likely to display violent information than boys, and teens who reported a sexual orientation other than “straight” showed increased displays of references to sexual behaviors. Profiles that demonstrated engagement in sports, hobbies or religious involvement were associated with fewer displays of risky behaviors.

“In the ’90s, we talked about a digital divide that separated rich from poor. That divide is quickly narrowing, but a new one is emerging rapidly: The twenty-first century digital divide separates too many clueless parents from their Internet-savvy children,” says study co-author Dimitri Christakis.

In discussing the study, Christakis encourages parents to become Internet savvy and stay ahead of their kids’ Internet knowledge base. Parents need to monitor kids’ activity online just as they do in the real world, he says, noting that teens historically lack judgment, something that hasn’t changed with this medium that makes the “coolness” of risky behaviors more potent.

The second study gives parents an easy solution to the current social networking scene — send an e-mail to the teen referencing the publicly available information on the teen’s MySpace or Facebook page. When lead author Megan Moreno did just that to 190 teens, 42 percent of them either changed their pages or made them private. Moreno and Christakis also recommend Googling a teen’s name with them and talking about what you find.

An incident in Michigan recently illustrates their point. A middle school student in Farmington faced disciplinary action at school after posting a threatening message on a Facebook page. A parent saw the message and alerted the school district, which locked down the school for a short time while police investigated.