Drug dealing on the social Web

For some time I’ve been writing and speaking about the other kind of support teens are finding on the Web, support for risky or self-destructive behavior – which long predates this latest, very social phase of online life. Now there’s some valuable research on this – a study of “more than 10 million online messages written by teens in the past year,” USATODAY reports. Conducted by Nielsen BuzzMetrics for The Caron Treatment Centers, a non-profit program in Pennsylvania, it found that teens “regularly chat [online] about drinking alcohol, smoking pot, partying, and hooking up.” Only about 2% of the messages in blogs, public chatrooms, message boards, and other online spaces, specifically mentioned drugs or alcohol, says USATODAY, but the article led with the experience of an 18-year-old, now in recovery, who “wrote freely [in her online journal] about her drug use,” and used the Net to contact her dealer and connect with people who had drugs. “Many of the teens who posted messages about drugs or alcohol often traded information about using illicit substances without getting hurt or caught. Some teens debated drug legalization and the drinking age. Other teens recounted their partying experiences, including sexual liaisons while drunk or high,” USATODAY says the study found.