A recent conference in Hawaii examined the connections between social media, substance abuse and suicide, with a focus on the adolescent years. Sponsored by The Coalition for a Drug-Free Hawaii, Dr Inaba was one of the featured speakers. Darryl gives us highlights of the conference, and shares some of the statistics showing a dramatic correlation between these three behaviors.
Transcript (edited):
HOWARD: Welcome to the CNS Podcast featuring Dr. Darryl Inaba, research director for CNS Productions, I am Howard La Mere. Darryl made a presentation in Hawaii the lucky fellow got to go to Hawaii in the middle of winter – and was part of a conference focusing on social media, substance abuse and suicide. Share your experiences with our listeners Darryl.
DARRYL: Yes, Howard – it was rough – the plane left the gate in Seattle just as a blizzard blew in – the plane had to be de-iced before we could take off and we arrived in Honolulu to temperatures pushing 80 degrees! And it was 80 degrees the whole week! It was such a wonderful time. Hats off to Allen Shinn, Kay Harada and everyone associated with “Drug Free Hawaii Hawaiis Pacific Center of Excellence – they have their fingers on the pulse of many, many key issues. The connection between teen suicide and social media was surprising to me until I had a chance to interact with the other speakers and make my presentation. It was a challenge because this is a topic I usually dont speak that much about, but it is a far reaching issue as I discovered preparing for this conference and then listening to the other speakers. There is a definite connection between the use of the internet, the potential for abusing drugs, the potential for suicide. The proportion of dysfunctional kids who use social networking – Facebook and the like is much higher than kids who dont participate. Theres just a huge difference in the number of suicides. I was asked to present with Dr. Antonio Alvarez and Arnold Laanui , an FBI agent, the topic was suicide in Hawaii. They presented heartbreaking testimony from young high school kids whose friends had just committed suicide or gotten deep into drugs or were victims of cyber bullying. This is a growing issue not only in Hawaii, but according to the research I did – across the United States. I was able to access a study done by Columbia University National Center of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, this was a massive survey of parents and youth about these issues as well as information from a group that looks at advertising or, you know, trying to police alcohol advertising that targets young children and some fascinating things came out. I was asked to talk about how this related to the adolescent brain and why adolescents were more vulnerable to certain things like drug abuse and certain behaviors.
HOWARD: I was just about to ask you about the social media what that does to the brain and if its related to drug taking behavior. Why the strong correlation?
DARRYL: Well, I think part of it is – although the advertisers deny it, advertising is directed at this group. There are laws against advertising alcohol or tobacco to youth, and they are supposed to be absent from these youth websites – Facebook or whatever, – but it was clear from Arnold, the FBI agent, that kids, who want access to this information create a phony Facebook or My Space page. He said you can tell by what they say their age is and it is usually 99 years old or something like that.
HOWARD: Good clue.
DARRYL: They make up a false age so they can get everything in the world on their pages. And the advertisements that are out there for beer and wine and hard liquor – one would think that they portray middle class people, you know, having a social hour with each other because you have to be 21 before you can even drink – but all the ads that I was able to download – because you can download tens of thousands of these advertisements onto Facebook every day and every month – were pretty much, very young people having a sexy, wonderful time – which could be construed as “youre going to be left out unless you participate” – which is similar to how the tobacco industry, because they lose 440,000 customers a year, started producing ads that would attract young people to replace those who quit. Alcohol loses 130,000 customers a year, so theyve got to replace them somewhere and marketing to kids is one way. In addition to that, the way the alcohol industry is getting around a lot of this is that young kids themselves, on their Facebook pages and their My Space pages will put photos of themselves or other kids getting loaded or smashed, smoking dope and drinking. Kids want to show off that theyre drinking their name brand – the big bottle of Southern Comfort or big bottle of Jose Cuervo is prominently showed in the picture. Facebook says they cant control it. The FBI says they are up against freedom of speech. Facebook, Arnold mentioned, could be considered the third largest country in the world based on “membership” – the internet is not private – 2 billion people have access to that information and to remove or police information is basically impossible. I think he said that Facebook has 300 security people monitoring the site to remove any child porn or inappropriate ads – but they are tracking 2 billion people a day to find things and even when they do find things, they dont have a lot of time to determine the right to take them off. So, its a phenomenon that is happening. I guess Facebook – social networking is growing quicker than we have ways of policing or dealing with them.
HOWARD: And its private enterprise and so I guess its their responsibility to do the monitoring. While you were talking, I brought up Facebook just to see if they had advertising because I couldnt remember if they did and indeed, there is advertising and of course, no alcohol or tobacco advertising, but so I was just looking at a picture that my friend posted and eventually Facebook did take this down or block it for awhile. Its 2 pictures one of Mark Zuckerberg , who is of course the CEO of Facebook s and the caption says, I give your private information to corporations for money and Im man of the year. And the other one with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange saying, I give private information on corporations to you for free and Im the villain. So, if they can police that, I guess they could police other peoples sites too, dont you think?
DARRYL: Well
HOWARD: Especially people that are vulnerable like kids.
DARRYL: All of us questioned the FBI agent and he said Facebook hides behind First Amendment rights to do whatever they want and they will defend that, but they put the onus of taking things down on whoever posted them. Okay. So if the person who posted that agreed and took it off or got paid off and took it off they can do that, but the FBI was quick to point out, you never take anything off of Facebook. There are so many threads – people download things all the time – a person might remove something from one site but its already on a lot of different sites, shared with a lot of people. And the other thing is he says, its permanent – its forever on there. Thats something I hadnt thought about. It made me look at the whole social networking thing from a whole new perspective. What am I doing? Take me off of Facebook. Take me of off Linked In. Take me off Twitter, because basically we have no rights to privacy when it comes to that kind of thing. When youre correspond with a friend through Facebook – its out there. The tragedies that happen because of bullying on social networks usually involve adolescents. At that age brain cells are quickly being formed, gray matter is being formed, quickly being groomed or actually pruned out of the brain and what happens during adolescence is myelination – brain cells are developing with more efficiency – theyre getting myelinated It takes until your mid 20s before your brain reaches functionality – moving from the back forward causing a tremendous amount of risky or irrational unexplainable thoughts or behaviors during that time period. Being impulsive is part of adolescence. Not because a kid’s personality is that way, but because thats the way their brain is functioning at that age. They are moody, temperamental, oppositional. Any parent can identify with all of these things. Teens have a raging libido, because they are entering puberty – they are going to make illogical decisions and take illogical actions – you know, puppy love type of things guys saying they dont see their girlfriends often enough and they want to wait to have sex until theyre old enough, but gee if they had a naked picture of their girlfriend or boyfriend, it would help them out. And so stupidly, they post those pictures up there and then they break up of course and then the next thing you know, those pictures are all over the place and theyre photos of underage naked human beings that should be removed from Facebook but apparently it cant be done, which results in tremendous shame, tremendous suffering and ultimately – in some cases – real suicide. But in the studies that Ive found actually, show that the adolescent drinker or drug user is 300 times more likely to attempt suicide than adolescents who dont use alcohol or drugs. Currently in the continental United States, suicide is the third leading cause of death for this age group. In Hawaii, they said it is actually higher – perhaps the second leading cause of death in adolescents. Those with a substance use disorder, or adolescents who meet criteria for being diagnosed with alcoholism or drug addiction . have an 8.5 times higher suicide rate as compared to kids without a disorder. And so, drinking or using drugs during adolescence, is certainly linked to suicidality and deaths. That is probably because at that age the brain is not fully developed, especially the control areas. Those are key areas of executive function and decision making. Irrational thoughts, embarrassment, feeling excluded and isolated – those are difficult to suppress at that age.
The other thing I found after exploring CASA or the Columbia National Center on Alcoholism and Addiction activities was a big study on social networking, substance abuse, suicides where 30% of the adolescents they surveyed say they dont spend any time social networking. Im surprised at that, Howard, because all the adolescents that Ive come across here in Oregon and San Francisco, – theyre in class theyre on the bus theyre everywhere with their iphones and stuff connected to Facebook, or twitter, or just texting, its hard to believe that 30% of kids they surveyed, dont participate.
HOWARD: Well, I wonder what they are participating in?
DARRYL: Probably healthier things, according to this.
HOWARD: I was going to say either more of something or less of something. But a lot of us have decided that Facebook is not for us.
DARRYL: Its evil. Anyway .
HOWARD: Once youve got an account and youre logged in, then its too late.
DARRYL: Maybe I didnt read the information correctly now that I think about it – because the study measured use on a daily basis. So maybe that 30% references those who don’t use social networking on a daily basis – but do use it. Of the adolescents that were interviewed 10% of those who participated daily in social network sites, use tobacco, only 2% of the non daily networkers use tobacco. 9% of non-networkers use alcohol. 26% of social networkers say they use alcohol vs. 9% of non-networkers who use alcohol. And marijuana use 7% of non networkers said they tried marijuana, 14% of daily network uses have tried it – thats double.
HOWARD: What are we defining adolescence as?
DARRYL: Adolescence is usually defined as .from 12 to 21 years of age, some studies define it as 15 to 25 or 12 to 25, up to 25 because that is when the brain becomes hard-wired and provides better control. But most of this study focuses on age 12 to 21. For whatever reason, there is a clear connection between social networking on a daily basis and the potential for drug abuse. Part of that might be because of the exposure to others in the same age group who are using drugs and smoking dope and things like that. I found some pictures of kids smoking monster joints, you know, just rolling monster joints and showing off – that may have an effect. The study mentions kids as young as 5 or 9 years old who had seen photos of other kids smoking and drinking and drugging and posting sexy photos of each other on these social network sites.
The other issue discussed at this conference – which is powerful and very painful for me to witness is the phenomenon of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has just exploded. Kids telling someone they don’t like them, .theyre a loser or something face to face is hard to do – but saying the same thing on someone’s website their Facebook page … its easier. And so, theres tremendous amount of cyber bullying .of people making disparaging or disgusting comments on web pages. There are unflattering or compromising photos posted that the subject would never post for public view and removing them from a web page can only be done by the person who originally posted them. And more often than not, theyre going to tell you to shove it its freedom of speech – they can post anything they want. But again, the studies show a big disparity, like 14% of those kids who said they were cyber bullied, use tobacco compared to 6% who have not been cyber bullied. 40% of those kids who have been cyber bullied use alcohol and only 17% of those who have not been cyber bullied use alcohol. Because cyber bullying creates emotional stress – alcohol is sometimes used as a coping mechanism. Marijuana is also used as a coping mechanism.
I applaud Hawaii for being one of the first states to really take a step back and look at this and say maybe we should do something. And it was surprising to hear from the FBI and from other legal authorities that they can’t do anything. . There arent any laws yet that have teeth enough to go out there and deal with it and even if they did, the internet is so large, has so many pieces and is so permanent that theyre not going to be able to control all of it. Im not sure what the solution to this is.
HOWARD: The phenomenon is very interesting… it is an interesting time to be a sociologist these days because theres a lot seemingly new behaviors that humans are coming upon.
DARRYL: Its going to be interesting for lawyers too – figuring out the laws. How can we police this? What can we do? If somebody has been cyber bullied or the victim of a negative photo post on a Facebook page – technically no law has been broken ..
HOWARD: It could be defamation or libel
DARRYL: But thats interpretation.
HOWARD: And thats a tricky one too.
DARRYL: With the right to free speech – there are no adequate ways of dealing with this new phenomenon.
HOWARD: Yes and this presents new challenges for treatment as well. Thats all the time we have today – Darryl, thanks again for your insight. That wraps our pod for today. Please check back soon for the next in the series and let us here from you – your comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome.