Safe sex text promotes AIDS awareness to teens

NEWS AIDS charity kikass.com is launching a mobile phone SMS survey to canvass young people's attitudes towards safe sex and their AIDS awareness. In association with mobile phone marketing firm 12snap, kikass will be texting a question to several thousand 16- and 17-year-olds across the UK asking them whether they practise safe sex. Recipients of the text questionnaires will be encouraged to forward the messages to friends - thus spreading the message of safe sex and increasing the reach of the survey. Kikass.com has clearly decided mobile phones are the easiest way to reach today's text-mad - and traditionally sex-mad - youth. Neil Almond, CEO of kikass.com, said: "Traditionally, it has proved very difficult to obtain information on young people's attitudes towards issues such as sex and drugs. By using the mobile phone, we hope to secure a great deal of valuable information on their thoughts about AIDS and safe sex. We will then look to roll out the questionnaire to a much larger audience."