Latest study suggests that using popular social networking site Facebook may make teens more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. Teens who see their friends drinking and smoking in images posted on Facebook are more likely to smoke and drink themselves. Dr Thomas Valente, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, who conducted the study said that the study showed that teens can be influenced by their friends’ online photos to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. This is the first study to find out how activities of teens on online social networking sites do influence their smoking and alcohol use. Dr Valente with his crew questioned 1,563 students aged 15 — 16 about their online and offline friendship networks, the frequency of their social media use and alcohol and tobacco consumption. Thus there was revealed that the size of a student’s online network of friends was not much connected to risky activities. However, exposure to friends’ online images of drinking was greatly connected to both smoking and alcohol use. Teens whose friends did not drink alcohol were more likely to be affected by increasing exposure to risky online images. Dr Grace Huang, the author of the study, said tha the evidence suggests that friends’ online behaviours are a sustainable source of peer influence. This data is very important because in the USA 95% of youth aged 12 — 17 access the Internet every day, and 80% of those youth use online social networking sites to communicate. Almost 30% of survey’s respondents had smoked and more than half had had at least one drink of alcohol. One-third of young people said they have at least one friend who smoked and/or consumed alcohol. Half of all repondents said they enter Myspace and Facebook on a regular basis. Between October 2010 and April 2011, Facebook use (75%) increased while Myspace use (13%) decreased. 34% of young people had at least one friend who talked about partying online and 20% said that their friends posted drinking pictures online. However, little is known about how social media use affects adolescent health behaviours and the study suggests that it may be beneficial to teach teenagers about the harmful effects of posting risky behaviours online and how it can affect their friends.
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