Nancy from MI

Found this interesting article posted on another home schooling board.
Great for teens!

~Nancy

--- In careaboutgirls@y..., "Kemp, Susan" <AM4030@d...> wrote:
Teenagers Find Health Answers With a Click


By BONNIE ROTHMAN MORRIS

Emily Davison, a 12-year-old seventh grader at the Trinity School in
Manhattan, used to think she was overweight. Recently, she changed
her mind. Emily didn't lose a single pound to change her attitude.

She went online and consulted iEmily, a new site devoted to
helping teenage girls - and not just ones named Emily - get answers
to questions about physical and mental health. After reading
articles on the site about healthy weight and body image, Emily
realized she wasn't fat after all.

"I read some of the articles about how a lot of girls who think
they're overweight aren't. Now I feel more comfortable about my
weight," said Emily, who said she visited the site (www.iEmily.com)
for at least 30 minutes daily to get information about nutrition
and fitness and to find solace from the stress she says she feels
at school. A private company, iEmily is based in Boston and carries
no advertising.

Emily said that, up to now, she had not had any health education
at school and, she admits, she has a lot of questions that need
answering. She said she could ask her mother about "lot of things,"
but there are some things she is too embarrassed to ask. Emily is
not unlike thousands of other adolescents, both boys and girls, who
are turning for answers to their health questions to Web sites
focused on teenage health and written by medical professionals with
a view to providing balanced, factual information.

In addition to the for-girls-only iEmily, the most comprehensive
of these sites are TeenGrowth (www.teengrowth.com), the Web site
for the Pediatric Health Alliance, a group practice in Florida; the
teenager section of KidsHealth site (www.kidshealth.org), which is
underwritten by the Nemours Foundation; and ZapHealth
(www.zaphealth.com), a company based in Manhattan, the only site
among these that carries advertising.

Organized like interactive magazines, the sites include articles
on general, sexual and emotional health, as well as fitness,
sports, family and safety issues, links to resources for more help,
forums and, on two sites, chat rooms. The sites cover almost every
health and wellness subject that occupies adolescents, from breast
and penis size to pimples and dandruff, from crushes and French
kissing to more serious issues like depression, drug abuse and
pregnancy.

For teenagers, turning to the Web for health information is
natural since they are online anyway, playing games, sending e-
mail and learning, according to a recent survey conducted by
Jupiter Communications and Media Metrix. That they spend an average
of 15 minutes per visit to these health sites is no surprise to the
executives who run them. "It is blatantly obvious that teenagers
were an ignored population medically speaking," said Dr. F. Lane
France, medical adviser to TeenGrowth.

Teenagers have "an insatiable curiosity about `me,' " said Kate
Kelly, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Parenting a
Teenager."

Just a few years ago, most teenagers would get the basics in
health class and the rest of their health information (or
misinformation) from hurried conversations in school bathrooms.
Sometimes, they may have even asked their doctors. But, since many
adolescents still see a pediatrician, who has a relationship with
the parent, not the patient, asking intimate questions is tricky,
Ms. Kelly said. For adolescents who wish to satisfy that insatiable
curiosity, the Web offers something a visit to the doctor's office
doesn't: privacy.

"If you have questions about stuff you can just go on and no one
knows about it," said Elizabeth Anderson, 12, a seventh grader in
Brookline, Mass., and an iEmily visitor. "It's secret and has lots
of information."

Articles about issues of pressing interest to a teenage audience
are abundant. ZapHealth, for instance, offers: "Body Odor, a k a
B.O." "Am I Still a Virgin If I Use a Tampon?" is on KidsHealth.
Features on body piercing and tattoos are included on iEmily.

"Before I would go to girl magazines, which would have a page
dedicated to specific questions, but of course these weren't my
questions, there were matters that didn't affect me," said Bhavi
Hansoty, 20, a sophomore at Vassar and a frequent visitor to
ZapHealth.com. She also serves on a panel the site consults when
developing material.

Recently, Ms. Hansoty was considering getting her navel pierced.
After reading the articles on body piercing on the site, she
consulted the feedback page where she read grueling accounts of the
pain, inflammation and infection experienced by others with pierced
belly buttons. Ms. Hansoty decided against the piercing.

She said the real stories from real people that she found on the
site persuaded her to change her plans. In fact, the real action on
these sites happens in the interaction. At ZapHealth and iEmily,
teenagers can talk to one another, offering advice in chat rooms on
topics as diverse as curing the frizzies and masturbation as a sin.
Rina Spence, who founded iEmily, said the site moderated all chats.
ZapHealth's chats are unmoderated, said Chelsea Farley, the site's
founder. There are no chat rooms on TeenGrowth .com or on
KidsHealth.org/teen.

While chatting is like being in a virtual school bathroom,
bulletin boards and forums on the sites are places where teenagers
ask their most personal questions and have them answered by medical
professionals. The questions are then posted, with all identifying
details removed, for others to consult. Though each Web site urges
visitors with serious problems to get immediate help from a
counselor or physician, some teenagers - suicidal, drug-abusing or
pregnant - send S O S's to the site anyway. They are immediately
and privately answered.

Desperate e-mail messages are rare, though. Mostly, questions for
the site's medical professionals are of less urgent, though no less
pressing, matters. Often, teenagers just want reassurance that they
are normal.

And, as the letters come in, the sites continue to stockpile the
answers and make them available through searchable indexes.

Carol Weston, who runs the GirlsTalk forum on iEmily and who is an
author of seven books for teenage girls, has been answering letters
from teenagers for 15 years. Mostly, the questions she receives
stay the same from year to year. Her most enduring one: "Does he
like me?"

When Emily Davison was hurt to discover that a boy she had a crush
on started going out with her best friend, she consulted iEmily.
What she found helped a little, she said, but since she still felt
betrayed, she went to her mother. Talking to her mom, Emily said,
was the one thing that really helped.
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