Fentanyl overdoses have become a leading cause of death among minors over the past five years, even as overall drug use has declined slightly. In a 2022 analysis of prescription pills containing fentanyl, the DEA found that six in 10 contained a potentially lethal dose of the drug.
And social media, where tainted, counterfeit prescription drugs can be obtained with just a few clicks, is a big part of the problem. Experts, law enforcement and child rights activists say companies like Snap, TikTok, Telegram and Meta, which owns Instagram, aren’t doing enough to keep kids safe.
In 2022, two weeks after she turned 17, Coco left her home just outside New York City to meet a dealer she had emailed on Instagram who promised to sell her Percocet, her mother, Julianna Arnold, recently recalled. She never returned home. She was found dead the next day, two blocks from the address the man had given her.
Whatever the dealer gave Coco, her mother said, it wasn’t Percocet. It was a fake pill containing fentanyl, which can be deadly in a dose as small as the tip of a pencil.
Mikayla Brown lost her son Elijah, who was called Eli, to a suspected fentanyl overdose in 2023, two weeks after his 15th birthday. His father found him unconscious one morning in September of last year. The cause of death was an accidental fentanyl overdose. But he wasn’t trying to buy fentanyl, he was looking for Xanax, and like Coco, he ended up with tainted pills that killed him.
Jae C. Hong / AP
Wide availability
While data on the prevalence of drug sales on social media is difficult to obtain, the National Crime Prevention Council estimates that 80% of fentanyl poisoning deaths among teens and young adults can be traced back to a social media contact.
In a sweeping 2023 report on the problem, Colorado’s attorney general called the availability of fentanyl and other illicit substances online “staggering.”
“Because of their ubiquity, convenience, and lack of regulation, social media platforms have become a major site for drug distribution,” the report said. “Whereas a teen might once have had to find a street dealer, harass friends, or learn to navigate the dark web to access illicit drugs, young people can now find drug dealers using their smartphones — with the relative ease of ordering food or calling a ride-hailing service.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of accidental drug overdoses in the U.S. has declined slightly each year since 2021. Paul DelPonte, executive director and CEO of the National Crime Prevention Council, attributes this in part to increased education and awareness about the issue. Among youth ages 0 to 19, there were 1,622 overdose deaths in 2021, 1,590 in 2022, and 1,511 last year.
The decline is “very small,” according to DelPonte.
Response from social media platforms
In a statement, Meta said drug dealers “are criminals who will stop at nothing to sell their dangerous products. This is a challenge that cuts across platforms, industries and communities, and it requires us all to work together to tackle it.”
The company added that it is working with law enforcement and proactively removed 2 million pieces of content, 99.7% of which were removed before they were reported in the first three months of 2024.
Meta says it blocks and filters “hundreds” of terms associated with illegal drug sales and links to recovery and substance abuse resources when possible. But drug dealers and other bad actors are constantly changing their strategies and coming up with new ways to avoid detection.
Snap said in a statement that the company is “heartbroken by the fentanyl epidemic and is deeply committed to the fight against it.”
“We’ve invested in advanced technology to detect and remove illegal drug-related content, work closely with law enforcement to bring dealers to justice, and continue to raise awareness and evolve our service to keep our community safe. Criminals have no place on Snapchat,” said Jacqueline Beauchere, the company’s Global Head of Platform Safety.
While it can happen on any social media site, experts often cite Snapchat as a particularly dangerous platform, something the company has fiercely opposed. In October 2022, a group of parents who said their children bought fentanyl from drug dealers they met on Snapchat sued the company for wrongful death and negligence, calling it a “haven for drug trafficking.”
Advocates hope that regulating tech companies can help address the problem, as it can help with other dangers children face on social media. In July, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill designed to protect children from dangerous online content. It still awaits a vote in the House of Representatives. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., have introduced a bill, meanwhile, that would require social media companies to report illegal fentanyl, methamphetamine and counterfeit pill activity on their platforms to law enforcement.
“We must do more at the federal level to stop the flow of fentanyl into our communities, and that starts with holding social media companies accountable for their role in facilitating the sale of illegal drugs,” Shaheen said.
