In the past couple of years there has been an increase of drugs being shared on social media within all age groups. These posts or stories being shared can be a range of things, from people talking about drugs, people doing drugs, or even people selling drugs. But do those posts actually affect the people seeing them? Has social media given minors an easier access to drugs? Will the answer to these questions differ from age group? 

When clicking through Snapchat or Instagram stories you see a variety of things, but in recent times the amount of people posting about drugs have doubled since the beginning of social media’s introduction. Not only do people all around the world post about it, they also seem to be doing drugs more often than they shower. The potent smell lingering around Stafford High School has changed from B.O. to weed but why did it change? 

Administrative assistant, Pemela Adams, says “teens now-a-days do things they see on social media like drugs because they want to experience how it feels”. She then goes on to say, “70% of the things being done in this school are influenced by social media like drugs and disrespectful behaviors.” Sophomore William Bunns seems to agree with her. He has this to say,

people see things on social media, and feel the need to do the same, at the end of the day we are all just trying to fit in.”. But Basketball Coach Reshaun Phelps thinks otherwise. 

Coach Shaun thinks that without social media more students would be doing drugs more often. He said, “Kids now-a-days may be followers, but without social media as a distraction they wouldn’t know what to do with their time and would fall into things they shouldn’t. While social media may open a pathway to drugs, there is no way to know what it would be like without it. 

Overall social media does open a pathway for people to buy drugs but we will never know what it will be like if we take it away because there’s no saying whether or not things will get better or worse.