BMC Public Health 2007, 7:354 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/354 Internet, the Internet was a relatively more important source of information for reproductive health informa- tion for them as shown in Tables 2 and 3, although they did not consider the information highly as did their in- school counterpart. This fact is clarified by a student t test in Table 7 which compares the mean perceptions of the two categories. The Table shows that the mean percep- tions of the in-school adolescents were in all the cases higher than those of out-of-school while the reverse was the case regarding the standard deviations although the differences are only significant for 'useful', 'relevant' and 'source is evident'. The differential in the pattern of information sources reportedly available to the in-school and out-of-school youth is very interesting. Despite the relative advanta- geous home access which the in-school youth reportedly have over their out-of-school counterpart (Figure 2), the out-of-school youth use more of the Internet than the in- school, although they do not consider it a very qualitative source of information for their Parents and teachers, which are expected to be good sources of reproductive health information, seem to be mainly available to their in-school wards whereas friends and the Internet are the sources the out-of-school youth use most. This may explain why the out-of-school youth rely on private infor- mation sources for reproductive health information. Although this observation has some negative aspects and consequences on the out-of-school youth, particularly in respect of youth tendency towards sex experimentation, there could be a positive aspect to it. Cybercafes can become a veritable source of information about sex, STD and HIV/AIDS matters. If government and other agencies take relevant steps regarding restriction of access to porno- graphic and other devious sites, the cybercafés could be great sources of health information to adolescents. Very In-School Out of school 80 70 60 50 e g a ten40 c r e P30 20 10 0 Ever used the internet Home access to the Internet Email account FAisgpuercets 2of media access Aspects of media access. significant also is the relative non-relevance of the churches, elders and cousins/relations in acting as infor- mation providers for the youth. The relative high tendency for school Internet access will not be unrelated to educational use of school Internet facilities in the school, which may be compulsory. On the other hand, the low report of use of Internet at home might be associated with technical, and, or use related oversight that might be mounted by parents and senior ones regarding what, when and why the adolescents would want to use the Internet as well as the fact that a high proportion of the youth were in-school. There is the question of power supply which is very erratic, and which might discourage home usage more than the usage of cli- ent-based commercial Internet cafes where alternative power systems are often available. Parents, teachers, books, and health provider/clinics are reportedly availa- ble as sources of reproductive health information to the in-school youth as could be inferred from Table 3. The out-of-school youth are not as lucky as they tend to rely mainly on their friends, the Internet and their boyfriends for reproductive health information. The non-availability of parents as sources of information to the out-of-school girls might be because of the low level their parental edu- cational status. Moreover, some proportion of the out-of- school reported not living with their parents, a situation that might justify the parent-child communication gap. There is also a low role for television and magazines for the in-school youth, sources which are very much used by the out-of-school. For the two groups, the role of the church/clergy as well as those of siblings and cousins is also considerably very low. More and more, the Internet services offered in the cybercafes are becoming very popu- lar, inexpensive, readily available, and most significantly providing hideout for youth to browse those categories of information that should normally require supervision. A scan of the major city of Owerri where this study was car- ried out showed that most of the cybercafes constructed cubicles around computer nodes; a feature, which ensures that privacy of access and use, are guaranteed for every browser. Many cybercafes are for-business outfits whose major objective is to make money. It is a popular observation that parents do not tend to communicate about reproductive health with their chil- dren in most African communities, due to "illiteracy" and "cultural practices", and that adolescents might therefore "tend to rely on informal sources for information about their sexuality." This study shows however that in compar- ison with other sources, parents appear to be the most fre- quently cited source of information about reproductive health among adolescents, particularly for the in-school girls. Page 10 of 13 (page number not for citation purposes)