Not Science: Facebook Users More Likely To Do Drugs

Facebook is great for so many things: ordering pizzas, picking up hookers, exchanging messages with underage kids, wishing death upon your students, and railing against gay marriage. But according to a new study, there’s a dark underbelly to the social network: kids who regularly use it are more likely to do drugs! “The findings in this year’s survey should strike Facebook fear into the hearts of parents of young children,” said Joseph Califano, one of the researchers.

Let’s forget for a moment that basically everyone (750 million active users) is on Facebook, and that over 50 percent of high schoolers are going to try drugs anyway (because they’re kids)—Facebook is corrupting our children! Of the approximate 2,000 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 surveyed, 70 percent said they log in once a day. Kids who did were found to be five times more likely to buy tobacco, three times more likely to use alcohol and two times more likely to use marijuana.

“The anything-goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression and suggestive television programming that teens are exposed to on a daily basis puts them at increased risk of substance abuse,” said Joseph Califano, chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at New York’s Columbia University, which did the research. Califano argues that Facebook normalizes doing drugs and binge drinking…though we’re not sure how that’s any different than how rock and roll and celebrities have been glamorizing drugs for years.

Time Magazine rightly points out that Califano is an alarmist, arguing that the “research methods used here cannot actually determine whether social media causes increased substance use or whether the association is simply related to a third factor.” Writer Maia Szalavitz compares the study with a similar one that found an inverse correlation between a penile length and a country’s gross domestic product—”no one seriously believes that penis reduction will solve our economic problems.”

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How do I wrap social elements into my email marketing program?

Social media is a tremendous tool in a marketer’s arsenal that, when used strategically, can serve as fuel to lift all other marketing channels. This is particularly true of email.

One way to integrate social into an email marketing program is to include a personal URL (PURL) within the email that your customers can then use to spread the word about a brand and simultaneously earn a reward for sharing. While this link can be shared via email, it is often most effective when shared across social channels.

By incorporating PURLs into referral campaigns, you are enabling your customers to instantly share them on Facebook, vastly increasing the exposure as compared to one-to-one email. While direct clicks from social channels tend to be lower than those coming from emails, customer satisfaction measurement firm ForeSee found that “while only 1% of site visitors come from a social media URL, 18% of site visitors report being influenced by social media to visit a website.”

Social platforms can also serve as catalysts for marketers to increase their email database. A great example is YouBeauty, which leveraged the power of social to build its email assets. YouBeauty worked with Extole to design a Facebook sweepstakes that asked entrants to provide email addresses and opt in to receive itsr email newsletter. At the end of six weeks, YouBeauty’s Facebook campaign landed it 13,000 new email addresses, 10,000 of which opted to receive its newsletter. That’s 10,000 new qualified leads.

Social surveys are another effective way to build your email database. For example, a leading cosmetics company developed a Facebook survey on skin health, and all consumers who completing the survey received a sample. Within 48 hours, Extole provided the retailer with 10,000 new qualified email addresses. The original goal had been to reach this target in three months (not two days).

Integrating social amplifies the impact of any email marketing campaign; and those marketers taking a creative and engaging approach to social—with an intent to build on their powerful email marketing assets—will be the ones who pull ahead of the social pack.

Greg Brown is chief revenue officer of Extole (http://extole.com), a provider of social engagement applications.

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