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"It's a bit of an in-your-face reminder about the consequences of sexual activity. I think that definitely could have impacted our results," Moreno said.
The e-mails, in which Moreno introduced herself and explained that the behaviors mentioned in the profiles could cause problems, received few responses and those were mixed.
Moreno said that a handful thanked her for the information, while another handful told her to mind her own business.
While not overwhelming, the study presents a promising avenue into new research on how social networking sites can be used, Moreno said.
She is also not discouraged by the relatively low response.
"We wanted, for this study, to target a population, which frankly we thought would be least interested in our message," Moreno said.
She said they chose inner-city youths in one of the five most impoverished areas in America, because they felt if their program succeeded there, it could succeed elsewhere.
But getting a better response may not mean simply finding a different audience.
"I think when you talk to kids about their risky behavior, you have to be sensitive to how you do it," Emory University psychologist Nadine Kaslow said.
She said that future research would need to experiment with different tones and even different authors, as she said youths may not respond to a doctor, whom they see as being like a parental authority figure.
An e-mail from a peer, Kaslow said, might lead to a stronger response.
For her part, Moreno said future studies would probably look at how the e-mail warning was presented, and whether the gender would affect results, as the study showed more females than males responding to her message.
But while Kaslow said the intervention would need more tweaking for the future, it may help youths online.
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