New Technology Tools: Using Social Media for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention

When it comes to using social media technology for alcohol, drug abuse, and violence prevention, Thomas Workman, at Baylor College of Medicine’s John M. Eisenberg Center for Clinical Decisions and Communications Science, points out that social media is interactive. “That means we communicate in a very different way, which poses a challenge for people in the college prevention field who have relied on one-way social marketing or substance interaction to communicate prevention messages. Social media is fundamentally interactive, which means that I am entering a conversation rather than a declaration, and I’ll get responses that may contradict my message. But how that conversation goes has great preventative power even though there is no message control.”

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