CHICAGO — The eternal struggle to keep young people away from bad influences has moved to a new frontier: A research organization recently said that teens who regularly log onto Facebook and other social networks are considerably more likely to smoke, drink or use marijuana than teens who don’t visit the sites.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teens who spend time on the networks are likely to see images of their peers drinking or using drugs — images that could help convince them that substance abuse is a normal, acceptable activity.
But some experts warn that the research, like social media itself, is still in its infancy, and that the correlation between social networking and teen substance abuse could be disguising more relevant risk factors.
