It can become extremely difficult for teens to stand up to peer pressure. Gone are the days when teens had to face peer pressure while at school. With the latest technological trends and social media, teens have to face even more pressure now. They can be easily influenced by anyone on social media, especially when it comes to teen drug use.
It is highly likely that your teens could be sitting at home, enjoying a decent night with friends when they or one of their friends check their social media accounts and all of a sudden, they see a video of their friends drinking, smoking, or doing drugs in front of the camera.
Your teen could also receive a video on WhatsApp in which one of their friends is doing drugs and also enticing them to do the same. One of the instant ways to prevent your teens from receiving such dangerous videos or messages on WhatsApp is to opt for the WhatsApp spy download tool and monitor all their conversations.
Social media platforms help teens exchange instant messages, photos, and videos. So, whenever your teen comes across a picture or video of their friends doing drugs, it doesn’t take them much time to locate their friends and join them within no time.
How Does Your Teen Find Drugs on Social Media?
When it comes to social media and drug use, you would be wondering how your teens are finding drugs on social media. It isn’t difficult for teens to find their friends’ location on Snapchat’s Snap Map whenever they open the app on their smartphones.
They can also use the “Quick Add” feature in the Snapchat app to add a friend that a lot of their other friends have in common. When they add mutual friends on Snapchat, it becomes easier for them to add a drug dealer on the app and request them for drugs in an instant message.
The National Institute of Health conducted a study in which they interviewed several drug users who have been using social media apps to purchase drugs. 75% of users said that they use Snapchat whereas 1 in 5 reported using Instagram for this purpose.
Besides Snapchat and Instagram, teens have been using instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Wickr, and even dating apps like Grindr and Tinder to buy drugs from drug dealers.
Besides dealing in drugs on social media apps, teens have also been using these communication apps to send money to the dealers. Apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are being extensively used to transfer money to the dealers instantly. Parents need to be careful about such things because messages quickly disappear on apps like Snapchat. A cell phone spy app can help you keep track of your teen’s text messages but you still need to be careful about all their online activities.
How to Keep Your Kids Safe from Drug Abuse on Social Media?
Drug abuse can devastate your teen’s life. It can ruin their academic life, destroy their social circle, and make them isolated from the rest of the world. What’s more, it can even lead them to have suicidal thoughts and take their own lives.
So what can parents do in this regard? How can they keep kids safe from drug use on social media? Following ways can help you prevent your kids from drug abuse on social media.
Have a Conversation with Your Kids
First and foremost, you need to have a direct conversation with your kids about drug abuse on social media. Social media exposes your kids to several ads, social media influencers, celebrities, drug dealers, as well as their close friends doing drugs. At this point, you can explain to your kid that they do have a choice when it comes to getting involved in such types of things and they do not have to take any peer pressure.
You can tell your kids about the dangerous side effects of doing drugs and how becoming an addict can ruin their life. Once your kid can understand all of this stuff, they would be likely to stay away from drugs on social media.
Limit Your Kid’s Time on Social Media
Another thing parents can do to protect their kids from becoming involved in drugs is limiting their time on social media. There are several monitoring and parental control apps can help you limit your kid’s time on social media apps. Once these apps are installed on your kid’s smartphone or any other device that they are using, they will limit their daily usage of certain social media apps and websites.
You can also encourage your kid to monitor their own time that they spend on certain apps with the help of usage statistics in their smartphone. Video-sharing platforms like YouTube also have a time tracking feature that helps a user know how much time they are spending there.
When you limit your kid’s time on particular apps, their exposure to harmful content on the internet is reduced. They wouldn’t be exposed much to content related to drugs and alcohol if you restrict your kid’s time on social media.
Ask Them to Follow Good Social Media Influencers
You can encourage your kids to follow good and decent social media influencers on social media apps. If your teens are actively using Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram, they will be probably following some of their favourite influencers there.
Make sure they are following good people who spread positivity on their social media feeds and encourage their followers to do better in their lives. You can also ask your kids to follow people who serve to be good role models for their careers or their interests/hobbies.
Your teens can follow several good and positive social media influencers in the fields of workout, dance, yoga, and art spaces.
Kids can be easily exposed to a lot of harmful content on social media, including drugs. They can engage with drug dealers and buy drugs from them. They can also search for drug-related hashtags and come across several posts or users promoting drug abuse on social media. On the other hand, they are also exposed to several social media influencers and celebrities who exploit the use of drugs by taking certain drugs and pills.
If you think your teen is engaging with a drug dealer on an instant messaging app like WhatsApp, it’s time for you to monitor their chats by installing a WhatsApp spy hack app on their smartphone. Besides that, you also need to control their social media usage by limiting the time that they spend on specific apps.
A simple conversation with your kids can also make you understand what they are doing online, what sort of content they are watching, what kind of messages they are exchanging with others, and who they are chatting with.
