Recently I've been seeing articles reporting on the decrease in drug use (with the exception of marijuana) and teen pregnancy in the U.S.. I posit that a significant explanation for these is the widespread use of social media. In the past kids exposure to drugs and sex was more whimsical. They saw characters in T.V. shows and in movies doing coke and having sex, and thought "Hey, that looks nifty. I'll give it a try". Facebook and other social media sites provide a more realistic view of these behaviors. When you Facebook stalk that kid everyone knew was doing meth/snorting coke/raving on X in high school and see that he's now incarcerated/living in a trailer/earning minimum wage at Fast Food Corp. X, you think "Wow maybe all those PSA's were right and your brain really is different on drugs." The same can be said for teen pregnancy. I know that reading the Facebook posts of girls my age with babies is an exercise in vaguely comedic horror. Rather than just that girls constantly shrinking group of friends she could have complained to in the pre-Facebook past being impacted by her horrific tales of raising an infant as a teenager, all of her Facebook friends are exposed to it, and girls who were having sex freely enough to end up pregnant probably also ended up with a relatively high number of Facebook friends after high school. It all boils down to this, Facebook forces today's youth to be exposed to a more realistic image of the hazards of hard drug use and unprotected sex than they would have in the past. It's not that it was impossible to see the effects of drug use and childbearing before Facebook, it just required more effort. Today you are just a few clicks away from a horror story that is more personal than any government study or news report, because it happened to someone you know and is accompanied by photo and verbal documentation via Facebook.
-Micah
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