Is Facebook bad for your child's health? Teenagers are more likely to smoke and drink if they see pictures of friends partying on the site

            

Using Facebook could make teenagers more likely to drink and smoke, a new report suggests.

Teenagers who see friends smoking and drinking alcohol in photographs posted on Facebook are more likely to smoke and drink themselves, according to the report.

‘Our study shows that adolescents can be influenced by their friends’ online pictures to smoke or drink alcohol,’ said Dr Thomas Valente, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and the study’s principal investigator.

‘To our knowledge, this is the first study to apply social network analysis methods to examine how teenagers’ activities on online social networking sites influence their smoking and alcohol use.’

Dr Valente and his team surveyed 1,563 15 and 16-year-old students about their online and offline friendship networks, the frequency of their social media use, their smoking, and their alcohol consumption. 

The researchers found that the size of a student’s online network of friends was not significantly associated with risky behaviour.