Quantcast

Not Science: Facebook Users More Likely To Do Drugs

82511facebook.jpg

Facebook is great for so many things: ordering pizzas, picking up hookers, exchanging messages with underage kids, wishing death upon your students, and railing against gay marriage. But according to a new study, there's a dark underbelly to the social network: kids who regularly use it are more likely to do drugs! "The findings in this year's survey should strike Facebook fear into the hearts of parents of young children," said Joseph Califano, one of the researchers.

Let's forget for a moment that basically everyone (750 million active users) is on Facebook, and that over 50 percent of high schoolers are going to try drugs anyway (because they're kids)—Facebook is corrupting our children! Of the approximate 2,000 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 surveyed, 70 percent said they log in once a day. Kids who did were found to be five times more likely to buy tobacco, three times more likely to use alcohol and two times more likely to use marijuana.

"The anything-goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression and suggestive television programming that teens are exposed to on a daily basis puts them at increased risk of substance abuse," said Joseph Califano, chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at New York's Columbia University, which did the research. Califano argues that Facebook normalizes doing drugs and binge drinking...though we're not sure how that's any different than how rock and roll and celebrities have been glamorizing drugs for years.

Time Magazine rightly points out that Califano is an alarmist, arguing that the "research methods used here cannot actually determine whether social media causes increased substance use or whether the association is simply related to a third factor." Writer Maia Szalavitz compares the study with a similar one that found an inverse correlation between a penile length and a country's gross domestic product—"no one seriously believes that penis reduction will solve our economic problems."

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

Comments [rss]

  • what about gothamist, bunch of stoners, cokeheads, and junkies on here I presume, probably more than a few whores too.

  • calcetines

    I'm a teenage drug user not on facebook, what up!

  • bloodtalon

    Statistics are awesome.

    In a traffic class I attended to get a speeding ticket dismissed, the instructor (?) threw out some statistic "Did you know that 60% of traffic collisions involve speeding?"
    But if you want to correlate high percentage statistics to some negative effect, you should go with ones that have more common ratios. Like "100% of traffic collisions involve cars". Obviously cars _cause_ traffic collisions.
    No, it wouldn't have anything to do with poor judgement at all. Of course not.

    Anybody looking to blame something for some effect can twist statistics around to do it. The same applies here.

  • Jay

    This article is the best joke I heard in a while, the image cracked me up.

  • Charles Ward

    I'd bet that the correlation has to do with intelligence and social class more than Facebook per se. Perhaps the stupider kids and the kids who are too poor to afford computers are less likely to get high? Facebook use might be serving as a proxy for social engagement generally.
    Califano sounds like he's into propaganda.

  • Hay; it's 420 here, time to Lite Up ;-)_

  • correlation != causation

  • wow. who the hell commissioned that image?

  • really? posting your opinion against gay marriage is on the same level as picking up underage kids and prostitutes?   this is not media, this is propoganda.

  • TimeDown

    I think that's exactly the idea. It was to show the variety of unrelated things that can be and are done on facebook, not to put them all on the same level.

  • calcetines

    ...or ordering pizza

blog comments powered by Disqus

send a tip

tips@gothamist.com