Social Media Predators vs. Your Teenagers
What To Be Aware Of
Technology and the Internet have fundamentally changed how children and teens develop. Today’s social media world has many young people living their lives in full view of an online audience. The amount of peer pressure, cyberbullying, and drug presence has never been greater than here and now in 2022. For young people, today, getting ‘likes’ on photos, posts, or comments in the virtual world can bring a powerful sense of accomplishment and community acceptance.
Sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat provide an environment where kids become exposed to famous and normal people a-like engaging in risky behaviors involving drugs and alcohol. Celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Drake, and Cardi B consistently post pictures of themselves drinking and getting high on social media platforms, and that’s starting to influence young people viewing it. Additionally, adolescents are not only exposed to celebrities and “influencers” engaging in this behavior but also to their friends and families. This kind of content normalizes and glamorizes behavior such as illicit and prescription drug use, and binge drinking, making teens wrongly believe it’s appropriate to do the same.
The Science
A study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teenagers who regularly use popular social media outlets were more likely to drink, use drugs, and buy tobacco than adolescents who either did not use social media or used it less frequently. The survey asked 2,000 adolescents about their drug use and social media habits. 70% said that they use social media on any given day. Researchers found that, compared to nonusers or infrequent users of social media, this group was:
5 times more likely to buy cigarettes.
3 times more likely to drink.
2 times as likely to use marijuana.
In addition to drug exposure through marketing and advertising, social media is the catalyst for many mental health problems that can lead to substance abuse. Social media perpetuates social comparison in a world where everything is curated, which is particularly problematic for teens who are more prone to depressive cognitions in the face of social comparison. Social media use is associated with mental health issues like depression, sleep disturbance, and eating dissorders among young people. Studies also show that 75% of teenagers seeing photos on social networking sites of other young people smoking weed or drinking alcohol encourages them to experiment.
Snapchat or Drugchat?
Police report seeing increasing evidence of drug deals via apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok – and say that this is one of the factors behind soaring drug fatalities through fentanyl-tainted pills.
Drug traffickers advertise on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. These advertisements are in disappearing 24-hour stories and in posts, which are posted and then removed. Posts and stories are often accompanied by known code words and emojis that are used to market and sell illicit and deadly drugs on social media. These code words and emojis are designed to evade detection by law enforcement and the preset algorithms used by social media platforms.
Prospective buyers contact drug traffickers on social media apps in response to their advertisements either using direct messaging or by commenting on a post. Once contact is made, drug traffickers and potential buyers often move to encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. Drug traffickers typically switch to these encrypted communications apps to arrange drug deals with prospective buyers. After a deal is made, drug traffickers request payment using one-click apps like Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, and Remitly.
