Alex Neville was a beautiful and intelligent 14-year-old boy who loved fencing, skateboarding, gaming and being a boy scout. He had big plans for the future – even thought about a career with the Smithsonian. But like so many teenagers these days, Alex suffered from anxiety. That anxiety led him to study the pharmacology of cannabis and again, as so many teens do, he began using as a way to numb his pain. But eventually that didn’t feel like enough, so he bought a few oxycontin through Snapchat.

You’re listening to Speaking of Teens, a weekly show to help you better understand and parent your teen or tween.

I’m Ann Coleman, and after surviving a couple of difficult years with my teenage son, I decided to make the leap from practicing law into the science of parenting teens and tweens. I want to make sure you have the skills I was sorely lacking.

Alex had been in residential treatment to deal with his anxiety months earlier, but on June 22^nd, 2020 he sat down with his parents and told them he’d been using oxycontin for a couple of weeks.

He told them he didn’t want to use – he wanted to go back to the treatment center to deal with his anxiety and get back on track. Thankful that her son had come to them with this information and even more thankful that her son wanted help, Alex’s mom, Amy, called the facility to make the arrangements.

But Alex never made it to the treatment facility. The next morning when his mom called out for him, she was met with eerie silence. As she opened his bedroom door and walked in, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. There sat her beautiful boy in his beanbag chair, shoes off, phone within reach – he looked like he could have been sleeping but she knew immediately that he wasn’t – he wasn’t breathing, he was blue and cold.

The Oxycontin he had just the night before confessed to taking, one of those pills he had purchased on Snapchat, killed him. It wasn’t oxycontin. It was a counterfeit, a pressed pill, made with fentanyl, a lethal synthetic opioid. He’d been taking the pills over the last 10 days or so, but this one, it had enough fentanyl in it to kill several people.

Just over a half hour after discovering her son lifeless in his bedroom, the treatment center returned her call.

Today, I want to discuss the terrifying possibility that your child could come in contact with a deadly dose of Fentanyl.

Opioid-related deaths have skyrocketed in the US over the past 20 years – According to the CDC, there was a 38% increase from 2020 to 2021 – more than 100,000 people died of overdoses. The most ever in one, 12-month period. Drug overdoses in this country now kill more people than car accidents and gun violence combined.

And around 3 quarters of all overdose deaths in the US are due to opioids and at this point, it’s estimated at least 90% of those can be attributed to fentanyl - illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

Per the CDC’s analysis of data from the advocacy group Families Against Fentanyl, from 2019 to 2021, deaths from fentanyl overdoses tripled in teenagers - tripled. In California alone, in the past 5 years, there’s been a 1,000% increase in the number of young people who’ve died from fentanyl. It’s an epidemic and no child is safe.

Stay with me because I’m going to explain exactly what illicit fentanyl is, where it comes from, why teenagers are at such huge risk right now, how our kids are getting it, and how you can talk to your teen about it.

This whole opioid mess this country is in started with Oxycontin - a chemical cousin of heroin – with some manufactured elements thrown in. Purdue Pharma and their affiliate companies pushed their semi-synthetic opioid to doctors all over the country, claiming the pain reliever was “less addictive and less subject to abuse and diversion than other opioids”. This was a lie. And they kept selling the drug even after they had reason to believe some providers were diverting it to abusers.

So, beginning in late 90s, until around 2015, these pills were creating addicts out of people who were simply looking to reduce their pain. They were told (as were the doctors) that one pill every 12 hours would do the trick – one in the morning and one at bedtime would keep the patient’s pain under control and they wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night to take more medicine.

Problem was – this was also a lie. In many people, the Oxy would start wearing off before the 12 hours were up and they would not only be in pain but would literally have withdrawal symptoms, including a craving for the drug – a true signpost of addiction. But doctors were just prescribing the pills to be taken in shorter intervals to take care of that little issue.

Finally, the US government started cracking down on the prescribers and when the addicts could no longer get their Oxy legitimately, they turned pill Mills where doctors wrote scripts for anyone anytime, but even worse, they turned to street drugs – opiates like heroin.

The isolation, the psychological toll the pandemic took on people only made things worse for these opiate addicts and likely turned people into addicts who weren’t before. And because there’re always going to be some people who are looking for the next big high, fentanyl was destined for abuse.

Fentanyl is also an opioid, but it’s completely synthetic, meaning the drug is 100% made from manufactured elements in a lab. It’s considered at least 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. My first and only brush with fentanyl was when my father was dying of cancer about 10 years ago. The doctor gave him fentanyl patches and I’d never heard of such a thing. Just the warnings in the packaging scared me to death. If I recall correctly, I had to wear latex gloves, to place the patch on his arm, I had to take them off a certain way and throw them in the garbage a certain way. I remember thinking, if it’s that dangerous, why am I putting this on his arm?! But it’s legitimately used for cancer patients in intense pain, and to sedate people for surgery.

But because it’s so potent, addicts soon figured out ways to abuse it directly or by adding it to heroin to increase the potency. Often pure fentanyl is passed off as heroin. But people who’ve been using opiates for a long time, even if not fentanyl, can tolerate the drug much better than people who’ve never had it. This makes determining the lethal dose for any opiate really difficult because it depends on the person, if they’ve used opioids for a while, how much they weigh, their general health, their metabolism and so forth. But according to the DEA, a “potentially lethal dose” is 2 milligrams of the dry fentanyl powder – that’s about the amount that will fit on the point of sharpened pencil or under your pinky fingernail.

Let me tell you something that wasn’t really clear to me before doing this research; when people talk about fentanyl, there are two different types. There’s legitimately manufactured, pharmaceutical grade fentanyl and there’s illicitly manufactured fentanyl.  Pharmaceutical grade fentanyl is of course, manufactured by a pharma company in a manufacturing laboratory – and I can tell you from working as an attorney in the clinical laboratory field for the last 10 years, there are a million hoops they have to jump through to control the quality of the product. Fentanyl is a schedule II narcotic – the same as Oxycontin, Percocet (just 2 names for oxycodone), Methadone, Dilaudid, Demerol. So, it is highly regulated but prescribed regularly.

For years all the illicit fentanyl was coming in from China – just shipped in packages through UPS, FedEx, or the postal service straight to the drug traffickers in the US or Mexico. These traffickers would then mix (or “cut”) the powder into street drugs like heroin or press it into counterfeit pills (we’ll talk more about that in a minute).

But in 2019 the Chinese government passed laws that put a huge dent in these shipments of fentanyl from China to the US. So, the Chinese criminal syndicates simply pivoted their business model and instead of shipping the end product, they began selling and shipping the precursor chemicals (the raw materials to make the fentanyl) to new buyers - other criminal organizations – so they can make the fentanyl.

But this illicit fentanyl is not made in a controlled laboratory setting. It’s made in exactly the type of places you’d think illegal drugs would be made – in clandestine locations like warehouses or basements or garages. No regularity or quality controls, no standard operating procedures, or protocols – other than probably what the workers wear to protect themselves from accidental death.

According to the DEA (that’s the US drug enforcement agency), the vast majority of the illicit fentanyl now found in the US, is being manufactured in Mexico from these precursor chemicals, which are shipped from China directly to the Mexican drug cartels.

These amateur chemists then mix these chemicals together in their “laboratories” and smuggle it across the southern border of the US in powder form or pressed into counterfeit pills. It’s then distributed all over the country through drug traffickers and various small-time drug dealers…and then to our kids.

And the DEA has absolutely no faith that any of this will stop anytime soon. As a matter of fact, they predict Mexico will become more involved in the manufacture of the precursor chemicals themselves and they expect other countries to get in on the action as well – India already has.

Now because this stuff is made in these off the grid, sub-par labs by people who likely don’t have the proper equipment, the proper education, or the controls, you end up with a black-market product that is inconsistent in both quality and potency both from batch to batch and within single batches.

Not only that, but in many cases, what you end up with is not even fentanyl. You have people who really don’t know what they’re doing, mixing chemicals to a very specific formula, and if they do one thing wrong – heat it to low or not long enough or stir it wrong - you end up with these precursor materials that have not reacted correctly. Also, quite often, these amateur chemists change the precursor chemicals and make something called a fentanyl analog – something sort of close but not quite fentanyl - that has never been used as a proper medicine – so you don’t even know what it will do. So illicit fentanyl is a crap shoot. You have no idea of the potency or even if it’s actually fentanyl.

And the reason the drug cartels love it is because it costs basically nothing to produce and it’s extremely potent, so just a tiny bit goes a very long way. This makes fentanyl almost pure profit. And when you take it and cut it into other drugs like heroin, or cocaine, it maximizes the profit of that product as well because it makes it go further and makes the base drug seem more powerful.

But arguably, the biggest danger to teenagers is the pressing of these junk chemicals into counterfeit pills and passed off as the actual drugs these kids like to experiment with or use on the regular. Drugs like Adderall, Percocet, Oxycontin, Norco, Xanax, Vicodin, Valium and Ecstasy/Molly/MDMA. But I’ll go ahead and mention here that there have been reports of fentanyl being detected in marijuana and in vape pens – likely weed pens - but it appears this is not a widespread thing and in the cases where it was found, it may have been accidental contamination – there are no confirmed deaths from fentanyl laced weed or vape cartridges. But, that’s not to say it can’t happen and kids still need to be cautioned.

The counterfeit pills though, this is where the deaths are occurring in teens and young adults. And this is a crisis fueled by social media. Kids are primarily purchasing these pills from strangers on social media. Some of these fake pills may have a bit of the actual ingredients found in the legitimate drug, but likely not in the right quantities, or they may have the wrong ingredients altogether or even none of the active ingredients. And like I said, because fentanyl is so cheap to make and so potent, cutting it into all sorts of street drugs and pressing it into pills is a no brainer for the drug cartels. It’s a lot of work to get the real prescription pills these days because of the crackdown on pill mills, but pressing pills is cheap and easy. And because the stuff is also so addictive, the drug cartels are guaranteed repeat business (if the customer doesn’t die).

The terrifying thing about these counterfeit pills is that there’s no way of knowing if they contain fentanyl, how much fentanyl they may contain or where the fentanyl is inside the pill. Because of the lack of quality control in the way this stuff is made, when they mix up batches, it’s not a sure thing that the same amount of fentanyl (or fentanyl like substance) is in each batch, but it is almost certain that all the chemicals, including the fentanyl, is not mixed evenly throughout a batch – they just don’t have the sophisticated equipment it takes to ensure it.

So, when the cartel workers take some of the mixture from a batch and put into these presses to make the pills, the end result – the pill your kid could take – it’s anybody’s guess what’s in it, how much is in it or where it is in the end product, they ingest.

So, when we’re talking about fentanyl being unevenly distributed within a pill it’s called the “chocolate chip cookie effect”. When you mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, you know how when you spoon them out onto the cookie sheet, you might get 3 chips in one cookie and 15 in another. Now, imagine those chocolate chips are clumps of fentanyl and the cookie is a pill. You might have one pill that ends up with little or no fentanyl or you might end up with a pill with a lethal dose of fentanyl, all in one quarter of the pill.

What makes it even more dangerous, if someone buys a handful of these pills from a dealer and takes several and suffers no ill effects from them, they get comfortable buying from that dealer (and of course, they’re now addicted) but the next one they buy, could kill them.

And there’s also no possible way for the dealers to know if the pills the sell contain fentanyl. They might assure someone their stock has been extensively tested or guarantee that they’re prescription pills straight from the manufacturer, but that’s total BS. Dealers are at the very bottom end of the food chain. They get their drugs from another dealer, who got them from another dealer or trafficker. There is no way in hell they can possibly know what they are selling someone. And frankly, they don’t care. They care about the money – they’re doing it for no other reason. So, they can promise the moon, but it means nothing.

So, no matter what someone says, there’s absolutely no way your kid, purchasing a pill from a drug dealer or even a trusted friend (which is often the case) has any way of knowing what they’re getting. This is what your teen needs to understand. Unless a medication is prescribed for them and comes directly from their pharmacist, with their name on the bottle, they need to understand they are literally playing Russian roulette and fentanyl is the bullet. They need to assume that any pill or even any other drug they get from anywhere other than from you, is deadly. The DEA says that of the counterfeit pills containing fentanyl they’ve tested in their laboratories, 4 out of 10 pills contain enough to potentially kill someone – 4 out of every 10 pills – those are not good odds.

Here’s why people cannot possibly know if the pill they are taking is safe or even real. First of all, these counterfeit pills look almost identical to the real thing – unless you spot these pills for a living, there’s no way you’re going to know the difference.

Secondly, even though there are fentanyl test strips on the market and people tout them as a way to “stay safe” and test street drugs – even pills - that’s not an option in about a dozen states, because they’re still considered drug paraphernalia and are illegal.

And even if you could use these strips, they only test for fentanyl and 4 fentanyl analogs – there are many lethal fentanyl analogs they don’t test for.

On top of that, the strips are a dip stick that is used to dip into a buffer solution mixed with some of the substance the user is going to ingest. But do you remember the chocolate chip cookie effect we talked about a minute ago? You might have some fentanyl in one part of the pill but none in another or one pill in a handful may not have any and the rest may. So, to test a whole pill, it would seem you’d have to dissolve the entire thing in liquid – but there are no directions for that from the manufacturer of the test strips or anywhere else I can find. But let’s say you do just throw the whole pill in the buffer solution - then you can’t use the pill you tested. So, what do you do, take one of the other pills you bought from the dealer? No, because it could contain fentanyl even though the one you tested didn’t. So, using test strips for pills is not an option.

Bottom line, there’s simply no way to ensure that any pill that doesn’t come from your pharmacist is actually safe to take. So, your teen or tween needs to understand that they should simply assume that any pill or part of a pill they take, could kill them on the spot.

And, the DEA says these counterfeit pills are everywhere – cities, suburbs, rural areas. Last year alone they seized 20.4 million of them, but estimates are that at least 300 to 500 million are in circulation at any given time. Just a tiny fraction of those are enough to kill several middle or high schools full of kids. The latest press release from the DEA was in August, about these brightly colored “rainbow fentanyl pills” that are being intentionally marketed to kids. We truly cannot scare kids enough about this poison.

Something else to be aware of – there’s a way to save someone from an accidental fentanyl overdose (or what, many call a poisoning since most people are not ingesting fentanyl in their pill on purpose). The drug Naloxone can bring someone overdosing from an opioid, back from the brink of death. It comes in nasal spray, injections or an auto-injector and it’s nothing short of a miracle drug. If someone is showing signs of an overdose (slow breathing, not breathing, non-responsive, turning blue) anyone on the scene can administer the drug to the victim and they will immediately reverse the effects of the opiate – they breathe again. And it’s completely harmless if it’s given to someone who didn’t actually need it – it’s nonnarcotic and nonaddictive. First responders like police, fire departments and EMTs keep Naloxone with them at all times – it’s the only proven solution to stop the effect of an opioid in its tracks.

The drug is sold under the brand name Narcan (as well as a few others) but Narcan at this point, is basically synonymous with Naloxone because it was the first brand introduced. Fortunately, a majority of states allow individuals to purchase Naloxone without a prescription and administer the drug without liability.  Some insurance companies will even cover it, but the laws, of course, vary state to state. I have a couple of links in the show notes where you can check the law in your state.

Family and friends of those who are definitely abusing opioids or who are suspected of it, should carry Narcan at all times, as well as the user themselves. The problem is that most of us never suspect our teenager is using or even trying one of these pills. They don’t come ask our permission or let us know they’re about to do it – it happens and unless we find out, it could happen again. The scary thing is whether or not someone with Narcan will be around or whether someone will have enough sense to call 911 if a kid is dying from a deadly dose. Spending a few bucks and having Narcan nasal spray on hand might give you a little peace of mind even after talking to your teenager about this. Many of the deaths caused by these drugs happen at home. In March of this year 2 Portland Oregon high school students died within 24-hours of each other – both in their bedrooms. They didn’t know each other but each are believed to have taken a fentanyl-laced counterfeit pill; one a Percocet and the other an Oxycodone.

Last year, an Arizona mother literally saved her teenage son’s life by administering a dose of Narcan nasal spray as he lie on the kitchen floor unresponsive. It turns out he’d taken a 30 mg counterfeit, oxycodone pill containing fentanyl.

More and more people are calling for schools and other places where teenagers gather to have Narcan available at all times. In January, a 13-year-old Hartford Connecticut 7^th grader died of a fentanyl-poisoned pill at school. The school didn’t keep Narcan on hand, but a newly enacted law says they will now. Most school superintendents across the country seem to ignorant to the fact that this can happen at any school, at any time and again, state law varies as to whether it’s required in schools. Unfortunately, it usually takes a fatality for the issue to even come up. Check with your school, see if it’s available – is it in every building? Would anyone actually know how to administer it? By now, this should be a no-brainer.

Now, I want to talk to you about where your kid could get one pill that could kill them. They have a special ordering device in their hands at least 16 hours a day. It’s as easy as tapping an emoji in Snapchat. Social media – primarily Snapchat but also TikTok and Instagram – but dealers are on every single social media platform including Facebook and even Pinterest! This is almost exclusively the way teens are getting their pills. If your child is on social media (and of course, they are) then they’re potentially exposed to these drug dealers.

But on Snapchat, these dealers seek out your kid - they message teens directly and advertise their drugs – they may send them actual pictures or videos of the pills - kids describe seeing videos of bulk quantities of pills, meth and weed.

But the most likely way they’re marketing to them is by using emojis; a plug emoji signifying they can hook them up with drugs, a chocolate bar for Xanax, a subway car for Adderall, a football for oxycodone, a red heart for molly or ecstasy, a snowflake for cocaine, and a car for free deliver (but there’s and lots more. I have the DEA’s emoji code in the show notes for you.

These dealers will pop up in the “quick add” feature in Snapchat where you can add people as a friend based on proximity or being friends of a friend. I don’t use Snapchat and know little about it, but apparently other people can add your kid as a friend and lots of times the kids just add them to their friends list reciprocally. So, that could be a real problem. Now Snapchat has recently said they’ve changed the algorithm as far as the ”quick add” goes and that now if you’re kid is under 18, they can’t quick add unless the have a specific number of friends in common with a person. Big deal. How many friends – what if they’re everybody’s drug dealer? Plus, it’s just as likely the drug deal is a friend of your child’s – at least an acquaintance. It’s not just strangers peddling drugs to them.

Many of these dealers will also deliver directly to your home within hours of receiving the online order. A 17-year-old high school football star from Mesa, Arizona ordered a Percocet from a dealer on Snapchat at around 1:30 in the morning on August 15^th 2020. After a 15-year-old neighbor found him dead on the street the next morning, the family’s security camera footage revealed he had taken the pill right there at the curb when the dealer delivered it to him at 3 am…and promptly fell to the ground and died.

This teenager’s mom watches this same dealer on Snapchat as he gets kicked off time and time again and simply changes his name a little bit and gets right back on the platform, same profile pic and everything.

Snapchat says, "While we know that drug dealers seek to connect with potential customers on platforms outside of Snapchat, we want to do everything we can to keep minors from being discovered on Snapchat by people who may be engaging in illegal or harmful behavior."

The DEA’s Administrator, Anne Millgram says social media companies aren’t doing enough to stop dealers from peddling drugs on their platforms. She said in December 2021 CBS interview, "We know every single day across America that drugs are being sold on these social media sites Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook."

One District attorney in California says almost all of the pills purchased on social media are counterfeit fentanyl pills. And while some of these dealers are being charged with murder when one of their customers dies from their “goods” – that’s too little – too late.

Remember, Amy Neville, the mother of the deceased 14-year-old that I introduced to you at the beginning of the episode? In June of 2021 and in January of this year, she, and dozens of parents, gathered to protest in front of the Snapchat headquarters in Santa Monica, CA. These parents feel Snapchat is an accomplice to the murder of their children. Among the protesters in 2021 was Dr. Laura Berman and her husband Sam Chapman. Berman is an award-winning relationship therapist, radio and television host who lost her 16-year-old son in February 2021 to a fentanyl-tainted pill sold to him by a dealer on Snapchat. In her IG post announcing his death she said, “My beautiful boy is gone. 16 years old. Sheltering at home. A drug dealer connected with him on Snapchat and gave him fentanyl (sic) laced Xanax or Percocet (toxicology will tell) and he overdosed in his room.” She goes on to say, “We watched him so closely. Straight A student. Getting ready for college. Experimentation gone bad. He got the drugs delivered to the house. Please watch your kids and WATCH SNAPCHAT especially. That’s how they get them.”

She and her husband had a call with the CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, and some of the executives of the company just before the march in early June 2021. They said the call was just all platitudes and excuses. Specifically, they asked Snapchat to allow parents to use monitoring apps like Bark to watch their kids’ Snapchat account – a pretty simple request, right? Why wouldn’t they allow that? Well, Snap says because of user privacy and scalability issues. Which sounds like they’re saying that as between your child and you, as a parent, your child has a right to privacy, which legally, is simply not true. The scalability issue they cite is more likely their real issue – this simply means that allowing parents access to their kid’s private information would basically kill their business. The whole point of apps like this is for kids to have their own social world apart from us and if they know we’re able to see all their information (whether they’re up to no good or not), that sort of defeats the purpose for most of them.

While Snap publicly proclaims it’s open to working with apps for parental monitoring, as of September 2022, neither Bark (nor any other app) is able to monitor your kids snaps on Snapchat. Now, Bark can monitor text chats – not snaps – on android phones, but kids are going to just use Snaps to communicate.

When Amy Neville and other parents met over Zoom with Snap executives back in April of 2021 to discuss the same issue of drug dealers using their platform to easily sell drugs to kids, the executives basically tried to pacify them by saying they were going to start running public service announcements about drugs.

This is what the platform currently states on their website under the heading “Our Transparency Report for the Second Half of 2021 “…We have zero tolerance for promoting illicit drugs on Snapchat and prohibit the buying or selling of illegal or regulated drugs. Over the past year, we have been especially focused on combating the rise of illicit drug activity as part of the larger growing fentanyl and opioid epidemic across the U.S. We take a holistic approach that includes deploying tools that proactively detect drug-related content, working with law enforcement to support their investigations, and providing in-app information and support to Snapchatters through our fentanyl-related education portal, Heads Up.” And it goes on – you can read it – I have a link in the show notes.

But because of the nature of the Snapchat platform itself, there’s only so much that can be done within the parameters they’ve set up and the privacy policies they hide behind. According to their own information “once a snap has been opened by all recipients, the content is permanently deleted and unavailable. If a Snap is unopened by one or more recipients, it may remain on our servers for up to 30 days. A Snap that has been posted to a user's Story can be viewed for up to 24 hours. Typically, the posted Snap is permanently deleted and unavailable 24 hours after being posted to their Story. Chat content will typically only be available if the sender or recipient has chosen to save the Chat...”

On top of that, although they have no choice but to respond to law enforcement requests for information under the federal Stored Communications Act, even if they receive those requests, it’s their policy to notify the account holder and allow them to challenge the request (unless Snap deems it’s an emergency situation like child exploitation or threat of death or serious injury). They do say they will attempt to preserve the information if they receive a proper request on law enforcement letterhead. And they have been notoriously slow in providing information to law enforcement – sometimes up to several months, while the dealer continues selling drugs to kids.

But hey, they have that fentanyl-related education portal, Heads Up! Oh, and just weeks ago, in August of 22, they made a huge deal of rolling out their Family Center. This is what they say on the site: “At Snap, we believe that our products should reflect real-life human behaviors, and how people act and relate to each other in their everyday lives. We’ve made it a point to build things differently from the beginning, with a focus on helping Snapchatters communicate with their close friends in an environment that prioritizes their safety, privacy, and wellbeing.” I’m not sure how Snapchatting prioritizing safety or wellbeing in any stretch of the imagination.

And in a jab to IG, TikTok and Facebook they go on to say, “That’s why Snapchat opens directly to a Camera, not a feed of endless content, and is focused on connecting people who are already friends in real life.” Total BS.

They say this Family Center will “help parents get more insight into who their teens are friends with on Snapchat, and who they have been communicating with, without revealing any of the substance of those conversations.” And, in what I feel is a real dig to parents about their kid’s privacy, “Family Center is designed to reflect the way that parents engage with their teens in the real world, where parents usually know who their teens are friends with and when they are hanging out – but don’t eavesdrop on their private conversations.” So, in other words, look parents, you don’t know what your kids are talking about in real life and we’re not going to let you see what they’re talking about on our platform.

Most news organizations and even some safe media sites just took Snap’s press release about this Family Center and posted it. But the site social media safety.org posted a review of Family Center and called BS – actually they said, “The weakness of Snapchat’s Family Center is offensive in the face of the ongoing harm linked to the platform.  Significantly more effective safety options are available to Snap, yet it chooses to prioritize this incredibly limited one.  For the health and safety of our children, Snap must do better.”

So, here’s what the Family Center boils down to – it’s completely redundant. It allows you to see a list of the people your kids are friends with on the platform and who they’ve communicated with in the last 7 days. Big deal. You can already see who their friends are if you’re in their app – and you really don’t know who those people are because no one uses their real name. You have no way of knowing who any of these people truly are. And, even if you did, if your kid wanted to open another account for their really secret communications and friends, they can do that (and probably already have) and can toggle back and forth between the accounts in about 4 seconds. So, the Family Center, is worthless and a pathetic public relations move by Snapchat.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer, and likely no one does, for what to do about Snapchat. I’ve felt like it’s a scourge on humanity from the moment of its inception in 2011. My son was 11 at the time so he wasn’t using it for at least a few years but even then, I didn’t know how to monitor it or deal with it in any effective way. And I don’t know how you will either.

But what you can do is talk to your teen about the dangers of fentanyl and social media combined. You’re going to have to be very intentional about how you do this though. You need to keep several things in mind.

Numerous scientific studies have shown that traditional education-based drug prevention programs don’t work with teens. And for the same reasons, you’re lecturing or nagging them about the dangers of fentanyl and Snapchat won’t either. There’re a couple of reasons for this. First, do you remember talking about the adolescent brain’s reward system back in episode 4 – if not, you should go back and refresh your memory. The bottom line is that because of how their brain works, adolescents will participate in risky behavior, despite being fully aware of the potential consequences. It’s not that they think they’re invincible as people so often assume – it’s because they do a quick cost benefit analysis and determine the benefits of whatever they’re about to do, outweigh any potential risk– including death.

If you just jump in and start telling them all about fentanyl and the dangers of it, your kid’s going to tune you out, just like they do these lecture-style drug prevention programs. They’re going to feel like you’re nagging and treating them like a child.

Studies regarding prevention programs show they actually work better with teenagers  if the facilitator treats them with respect and affords them, with what researchers call “status”. And you can use these same tactics when talking to them about this stuff.

When you lump respect and status together, you’re basically doing the same things we talked about when supporting their autonomy back in episodes 15 and 16. Listen to their opinions, make them feel as if you appreciate what they think and say, that they really matter, that their contributions are valued. In short, treat them more like another  adult. This will be much more motivating for them than nagging or lecturing, where they feel you’re talking down to them and not respecting them or giving them the status they deserve.

To illustrate the difference affording respect and status make in a teenager’s motivation to change their behavior in some way, let me give you just one quick example. Researchers presented prevention programs to two groups of 7^th to 10^th graders. One group of teens got the traditional prevention program regarding unhealthy eating (explaining how your body works and why certain foods are good for you and others are bad for you, used assemblies and videos and role play, etc.). The other group of students were presented with a program that, as the researchers put it, “harnessed their desire for status and respect”.

This second group of teens were told about how sleezy food junk food companies are and disrespectful of kids. They told them how the companies have scientists formulate food that addicts their brains – that they hired former tobacco executives to market addictive junk food to kids and the poor - that these company executives won’t let their own kids eat their junky food – that when they or their parents buy it, they’re literally giving their money to these rich assholes that think they’re stupid for eating their crap.

The overall message this group got was, “healthy eaters are independent minded people who make the world a better place”, rather than the traditional approach which translates to “healthy eaters are pathetic nerds who do everything their parents say”. Big difference, right?

The message about healthy eating was conveyed in a way that allowed this group of teens to feel like they were joining a real social movement against these companies who are run my adults – it allows them to demonstrate their own competence over them.

The very next day, the kids in both the traditional program group and this “independent minded group” were offered a menu of snack items as a reward for completing their state testing. There were healthy and unhealthy options on the menu. The kids who got the program that appealed to their need for respect and status – the second group - chose food with overall 9% less sugar content. That’s pretty amazing for a very short education program. And it’s all because the message was delivered in a way that conveyed respect and supported their high status.

I really do believe you can use this information to your advantage. Talk to them about these Chinese companies who ship the precursor materials to Mexico and how they couldn’t care less about teens in the US and other countries and how they ship these precursor chemicals to the Mexican cartels to whip up their fentanyl and make a fortune off stupid teenagers wanting to get high. Tell them how these fentanyl “chemists” laugh about it in documentaries. Half the time they’re not even including any real ingredients in the drugs, cutting it all with fentanyl and making pure profit as kids drop dead in their bedrooms. That may just appeal to them in the right way to get their attention.

And, of course, remind yourself how important it is to listen more than you talk. If it takes several different conversations, that will be better than going on and on when they’re not talking.

Approach the conversation in a way that will invite them to talk. You could ask them if they’ve seen any public service announcements on Snapchat talking about fentanyl in counterfeit pills. You could ask them if they’ve ever known anyone to use a pill or buy one on social media.

A good place to have a conversation like this is when you’re in the car together – that’s one of the absolute best times to talk to your teen about anything. You’re side by side and they don’t have to look you in the eye, which makes it much more comfortable for them. Don’t do it when there are other kids around unless you think that will help move the conversation forward. Remember not to use a judgmental tone – even if you hate TikTok or Snapchat or IG, those platforms (or others like it) are here to stay. They’re deeply woven into the fabric of your kid’s social world and if you judge or criticize it, they’re going to feel like you’re judging or criticizing them and will not listen to a word you say.

PAUSE

Really what I want you to take away from this episode is how very much at risk all teenagers are right now. Teens who’ve died from fentanyl are not of any specific type – not a specific race, socioeconomic status, or gender. They’ve been football stars, academic standouts, outdoorsy, gamers, occasional users, first time users and addicts, popular, on the fringe, and everyone in between. Absolutely no teen is immune. We cannot know with any certainty whatsoever that our kid won’t try something. It’s the nature of adolescence. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean they’re unintelligent. It’s no reflection on you. It could mean they’re struggling. It could mean they’re hurting and don’t feel they can talk about it.

That’s why you have to stay connected to your kids and do your best to know what’s going on in their life. Make sure they’re comfortable talking to you about anything. Make sure they know if they’re hurting, you’ll go to the ends of the earth to get them help.

I have all sorts of great resources from various charitable organizations, the DEA, links to information about Snapchat and so many other things I’ve mentioned in this episode so be sure to check out the show notes. And look at the state law links and call your insurance – do what you have to do to have some Narcan at your house, just in case of an emergency. It’s better to have it and never need it than – well, you know the rest.

Now, find the right time really soon to start a conversation about all of this with your teen. Please.

 

Speaking of Teens is the official podcast of neurogility.com, an organization I started to educate other moms and adolescents about emotional intelligence.

Go to neurogility.com/herewego to find all our free parenting guides and e-books to help you learn more about your teen and how to parent them in a way that increases their emotional well-being and keeps them safe.

You can go to neurogility.com/21 for this episode’s show notes (list what I have if I did something) and transcript.

Thank you so much for listening – I try really hard to bring you valuable and actionable information. If you find it helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend.

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If you have any questions for me, have an idea for a future show or suggestions for how to improve the podcast, please reach out to me at acoleman@neurogility.com – I do read my emails!

Hang in there until next time (go talk to your kid).