A recent study published by the America Academy of Pediatrics, suggests that displays of sexual references on teens’ Facebook profiles is associated with their intention to initiate intercourse. The study followed 85 college freshmen with public Facebook pages and found a strong association between sexual references on Facebook and real-world intentions to initiate sexual intercourse. Although the study looked at college freshmen, a separate 2007 study conducted by the Center for Disease Control showed that by ninth grade, 33% of adolescent had sexual intercourse, so it’s not far fetched to assume that sexual material posted by younger teens could also reflect real-world intentions.

Prior to this Facebook study, the same researchers, Dr. Megan Moreno of from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, found that 54 percent of MySpace profiles contained high-risk behavior information, with 24 percent referencing sexual behavior. Of course, these on-line postings might indicate real-world risky behaviors or simply adolescent grandstanding, but what parent wants to wait to find out?

By tenth grade, the percentage of sexually active teens is just shy of 50% and this number does not include middle schoolers who engage in oral sex, which apparently is not considered sex despite the fact that one can acquire a sexually transmitted disease from it. Oi! And, parents, if you haven’t caught your breath yet, here’s a sobering statistic from the Center for Disease Control: One-third of American teenaged girls get pregnant before the age of twenty. That’s one in three, ladies and gentlemen.

So when is the right time to talk to kids about sex? That answer is simple: As soon as they start asking. When I was pregnant with my second daughter, my four-year-old asked me how the baby got in my tummy. I briefly flirted with the idea of giving her the pat answer my mother had provided me as a child, that “God put the baby there,” and then decided to tell her the truth. The director of our preschool gave me a delightful children’s book that helped me tell the whole story — yes with artistic sketches that showed “the act.” From that point forward I became the source of sexual information for my kid. Now that she’s in the complicated world of middle school, I am thrilled that she keeps asking and I get to provide biological information laced with my own moral teaching.

So, is it ever too late to start taking about sex with your child? NEVER. Teens may roll their eyes or plug into their iPod but, trust me, they listen to any source of sexual information, even when it comes from a parent.

Social networking sites can be a helpful way to be a virtual parent. Make a family rule that parents must be “friended” on kids pages. Before you know it, you will become lost in your child’s sea of online friends and sooner or later they’ll forget that you are reading their wall. Take postings seriously and use them not as an opportunity to admonish but as an chance to educate.

Bottom line: Know your own sexual morals and messages and find a way to guide your children before our highly sexualized media does it for you.