Social media has been a very powerful tool used to communicate among teens and adults alike. Social networks have been very convenient and excellent ways to get connected with each other. However, its effects on individuals can impact their thoughts and behaviors, and what's worse is that it leads or influence younger people to engage to bad behaviors.
A study by Loyola Marymount University reveals that Teens on Instagram have higher likelihood to engage in binge drinking when they get to college, ABC 10 News reported. The study has found that Facebook is no longer the focus of representations of college drinking because there is now a new destination for posts about underage drinking, and it is Instagram and Snapchat.
The research suggests that college students have the tendency to be influenced by their friends and peers when they see alcohol-related posts on the two mentioned social media platforms, Research Gate reported. It was also found that students who exposed to alcohol related posts from their friends have greater tendency to engage in binge drinking even after six months later.
Karina Camacho, a prevention specialist with the San Diego Institute for Public Strategies, explains that it normalizes alcohol use among teens, which means that because they see that everyone's been posting it and doing it and they see that on Instagram and Snapchat, they immediately think it is cool and it's okay.
Susan Boyle, one of the studies' authors, will be presenting this information to San Diego-area students, teachers, school administrators and university representatives.
What Camacho is looking forward to is that they will be able to make use of these findings to make students realize that not everything they see on social media is right and is a reflection of the real life, because, social media only gives people a glimpse, but not the whole picture of the situation.
