December 2023

Newsletter

PART 1

Today’s youth spend a lot of time on their mobile devices communicating through social media, which can be a complex and dangerous environment if left unsupervised.

Parents and caregivers need to be aware and monitor what apps their children are using and who they are communicating with.

In 2022, one of the effects that social media has had on society is that teens can purchase virtually any drug they want from the comfort of their bedrooms and have them delivered to the door within minutes.

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 2023. 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.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (NCASA) at Columbia University revealed that teenagers who logon to their social media accounts multiple times per day are more likely to drink, smoke cigarettes, or use illicit drugs. The study found that teenagers who look at social media daily were more

likely to engage in the following activities, including:

• Two times more likely to purchase marijuana
• Three times more likely to consume alcohol
• Five times more likely to start smoking cigarettes



In addition, over 90 percent of teenagers reported checking into Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram at least three times per day. Other popular sites include YouTube, Tik Tok, and Tumblr.

Drug dealing via social media is a serious, emerging social media-related threat.

Once children transition from observers to buyers, social media makes obtaining these drugs easier than ever before. 

The Organization for Social Media Safety has found in their own comprehensive testing that it takes about three minutes to connect with a drug dealer on social media and receive a “menu” of drugs for sale. 

This level of convenience and accessibility is incomparable to anything we have seen in our modern history. Previously, children determined to obtain drugs could certainly do so. But now, with a few clicks from inside a bedroom, children have access to almost any drug imaginable.