According to the Pew Research Center, 92% of teens (ages 13 to 17) go online daily, and 71% of teens use more than one social media site, with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as the most popular.   According to the Monitoring the Future study, in 2015, 48.9% of high school seniors reported lifetime use of illicit drugs.   What do these statistics have to do with each other? Social media is an arena where adolescents and teens share their habits, opinions, and behaviors—a mixture ripe for peer pressure and influence, which both play major roles in whether kids try or abuse drugs.   As children grow up, their parents have the greatest influence on them, teaching them acceptable and unacceptable social norms, behavior, and attitudes. However, as kids grow older, their peers have a greater influence on them. Teens are more susceptible to peer influences because their brains are still developing and because social groups play such a huge role in school. Before the internet, peer pressure occurred at school or when hanging out with friends.   But with the advent of the internet and smartphones, teens can be inundated with peer pressure messages at virtually any time of day, in any location. Maybe they read a friend’s Facebook status bragging about alcohol abuse, or see a snapchat showing a friend smoking marijuana. Over time, images and messages about drug use from adolescents’ peers seep in; when their social media…