Texting, instant-messaging and social networking are so popular among teens that the shorthand has infiltrated American culture -- from lol to cu l8r.

But beyond giving teens their own lingo, lots of health experts are seeing this technology as a massive opportunity to spread information about sexual health resources and facts, and answer questions about the often private conundrums that young people face.

In California, ISIS has launched a text-messaging program called SexInfo, which enables kids to use a coded text message to get resources. For instance, teens can text "1" if their condom breaks, or "2" to find out about STDs. And in New York, a group of obstetricians and gynecologists are testing the effectiveness of text and cellphone reminders as a way of helping women adhere to their contraception.

Last month, Kaiser Family Foundations and MtvU partnered to launch PosorNot, a virtual game and online community that helps erase the stigma around HIV infection. The game also spreads information on testing and resources for those who have the disease. It's modeled, cheekily, after the degrading viral sensation "hot or not" -- but that seems to have gotten the kind of attention a blander site might not garner.

These are just several examples of dozens of hotlines, websites, cellphone services and more that are springing up to spread sexual health information around the globe. Using technology to promote health education is hardly new, but as new media tools gallop across income groups and geographical areas, so do efforts to capitalize on them, particularly since the private but interactive nature of technology suits the issue of sexual health.

"Everyone has questions about their sexual health, reproductive health, sexuality, relationships. Everyone doesn't have places to ask those questions," says Deb Levine, president of Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS), who has been working to integrate technology and sexual health for almost two decades. "New media provides this sense of anonymity, comfort, and privacy, but at the same time people can really find community and discuss issues."

Texting For Success

Levine and ISIS conceived of SexInfo when they noticed the ubiquitous presence of cellphones in California teens' hands. They partnered with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and got local organizations that worked with kids to help with the process, as well as talking to teens themselves. In the first 25 weeks of this year, 4,500 teens accessed the service, texting in numbers that stood for particularly popular questions they had about sex, such as finding out about STDs or info on pregnancy testing.

Since SexInfo's launch, ISIS has labored to make the interface simple and compatible with the media teens already love and the most pressing concerns they have, based on surveys done before the launch. "The most important thing is that we give them a place to voice concerns, to interact with them on their terms," says Levine. "It's not just experts answering questions, but experts saying ‘what are your questions?'"

Isis' efforts to advertise the program ranged from flyers and bus shelter ads to getting a popular local hip-hop artist to help spread the world -- but their community partnerships with clergy, juvenile justice groups, and health educators were particularly vital. They plan to spread the program, with variations, to DC and Toronto within the next year, and further after that.

The Buzz on Sticking to Contraception

On the other side of the country, a group of doctors at Columbia Presbyterian hospital recently conceived of a similar idea. Says Dr. Paula Castano, an ob/gyn at the hospital: "It was a combination of myself and other clinicians in our practice noticing when they asked routine medical questions such as when was your last menstrual period, patients would pull out their cellphones to check calendars."

Realizing that patients were latching on quickly to new technology, Castano and her colleagues saw a chance to use the trend - reminders via cellphone - to prevent unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. They did an initial survey in 2005 to decide whether a clinical trial on the topic was feasible, with promising results. They surveyed women of all ages in four inner-city family planning clinics, a racially diverse group of women with incomes largely below the poverty level. They found that 77% of women under 20 used a cellphone, and almost 90% of those used text messages. The survey subjects expressed interest in the idea of text messaging as a way of helping them adhere to contraceptive methods.

Castano and her colleagues are currently working on a clinical trial to explore the usefulness of text reminders on contraceptive adherence, which isn't easy for any woman but can be particularly difficult for women in distressed circumstances.

"Cell phone use is skyrocketing," she says. "And even though users have gone up, the monthly bill has stayed the same."

Challenging Stigma, Virtually

Using pop culture to endorse do-good initiatives is nothing new for the folks at Mtv U, Mtv's college station. Their viral "Darfur Is Dying" game snagged the attention of their longtime partners at Kaiser Family Foundation, who hoped to do something similar with AIDS-related issues. The folks at Kaiser realized that their target audience had shifted the media they consumed, and are "not always watching TV or looking at billboards or listening to radio." Rather, says Meredith Mishel, senior program officer at Kaiser, "they're gaming."

Kaiser joined forces with Mtv U and Poz magazine, the magazine for those living with HIV and AIDS, and sponsored a contest to design a game that would both combat stigma and spread health information. From the contests, the seeds for PosorNot, which launched April 31 with fanfare from pop artists like Will.i.am and Fall Out Boy, were sown.

PosorNot features a group of incredible people -- Mishel is full of grateful praise for their courage and conviction -- who have agreed to create surfable online profiles. Based only on appearance and a few initial details, participants are asked to guess whether these people have HIV or not, in the process learning to question their own assumptions about who is at risk for the disease. After they click through, users learn more about those who are affected by HIV either directly or indirectly, and are pointed to information about the disease and testing.

The relative security of the online interface, combined with the deeply personal experience of seeing human stories in front of them, enables a more thorough self-examination process. Younger generations tend to know there's something inappropriate about voicing their own assumptions when it comes to HIV. But without voicing those assumptions, it's hard to have them debunked -- which makes the beauty of an online, anonymous game obvious.

But more than just fostering personal discovery, the site provides constant opportunities to send users towards information on getting tested. In just one April day, they sent the entire month's sixth-highest number of visitors to the CDC's HIV page.

"People are staying for a while, exactly what we're hoping they'd do," says Caroline Herter, a program associate at Kaiser.

Ring It Up

Clearly, the use of technology to spread health info in the US is on the rise in a major way. But in other countries, where poorer infrastructure leads to an increased reliance on cellphones -- or where better technology introduced cellphones earlier -- the implications are equally exciting.

The UN Foundation and Vodafone recently released a report including multiple case studies of groups using cellphones to improve health conditions around the globe. SexInfo was spotlighted as one such intervention, but their case studies included NGOs using cellphone technology in Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina and beyond. In these countries as well as in the US, the benefits from using technology are the same: efficiency, anonymity, a chance to explore the wider world, and interaction with already beloved technology. In the near future, the buzz of phones or pings of a new e-mail may offer more than a social hello -- they can also provide vital, life-altering health information around the globe.