How to Script Teen Reality Series with Social Media Antagonists … Action!

Social media sites are only growing in popularity especially with teenagers with subsequent exposure to substance abuse, alcohol or drugs. They are the most at risk if only because they are the most active on the internet who might spend hours a day scrolling through pictures or making their next video hoping it may go viral.

How can we fix this problem for greater effect and reality retention for anti-drug life success?

Currently there are school-based prevention programs, active counselling centres and parents’ interventions to curb substance abuse. But what if society could do more by presenting a TV or video reality series featuring the drug related antagonists and survival strategies as relevant scripts with an integrated long term overview?

Make it entertaining but also authentic and meaningful with real problems and solutions. Talk about family life lessons with moral anecdotes and sometimes jokes for good measures. Let’s hope that really good shows become viral for more discussion and awareness.

In the 1980’s serious effort was made to scare teenagers from using drugs at that time when crack cocaine was becoming an epidemic with some intense video advertising. “This is your egg. And this is frying pan. This is what happens to your egg after snorting frying pan. This is what your yolk comes through. It’s not over yet … this is what happens to your family … this is what happens to your future.”

Partnerships and public service messages spent on air in excess of 300 million dollars to “Just Say No.”

It has been speculated that these initial attempts at prevention were ineffective because they focused primarily on lecturing students about the dangers and long-term health consequences of substance use. It didn’t afford any opportunities to practice how to refuse offers of drugs.

Teens need more than risk or fear mongering from authorities to set a protective shield to prevent early initiation such as active examples of interpersonal skills within normal social interaction over a period of time.

In other words, the best educational program would be a serious sitcom about reflections of teen life within the scope of prevalence and dangers of addiction as a family who learn to resolve this common enough social predicament.

Calling a good screen writer

Who do you know who could write a series starring a main character and his or her family and friends who are social media victims of substance abuse? The scenarios would include the educational strategies used in schools now but with a greater audience than the classroom. TV shows and videos are still popular and society in general needs to know what’s going on and how to help across the board.

Every story needs an antagonist and a protagonist

Antagonist a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary … person, creature, or force of nature — that advances the story through creating conflict; in other words, the antagonism is social media and drug use itself.

Protagonist is the main character of a story who faces significant obstacles; for example, a typical teenager at the center of the story who experiences the consequences of those decisions.

Antagonists are the many reasons for social media influence

• contains too many depictions of drug use (53.57 percent)
• actively promotes drug or even glamorizes substance abuse within a fun, positive social context
• tries to cope with poor mental health by turning to drugs as temporary relief
• talks about how adolescents are more susceptible to impulsive behavior and decisions that go against their knowledge
• becomes more normalized by the brain with more exposure to pop culture icons whose drug use are reason to experiment with substances themselves
• has more ways to obtain drugs more easily with images marked with hashtags and emojis that is safer than a drug dealer on the street
• warns about the greatest danger that the internet can connect to buy and sell to strangers around the world

Protagonist strategies to overcome these negative situations

It seems that schools are the focus of most attempts to develop and test evidence-based approaches to adolescent drug abuse prevention because they can access large numbers of students.

Why not take their instructional strategies and apply them in thoughtful sitcoms about social media intervention and drug resistance motives?

• Discuss psychological characteristics associated with substance use that include poor self-esteem, low assertiveness and poor behavioral self-control.
• Talk about pharmacologic risk factors that increase with frequency and quantity. Note that drugs of abuse such as cocaine, amphetamine, morphine, as well as nicotine and alcohol, have different pharmacological mechanisms of action that affect the brain.
• Become aware of the various social influences that support substance use and develop specific skills of self-control and self-esteem to effectively resist both peer and media pressures to smoke, drink, or use drugs.
• Build social resistance skills against high risk situations where peer pressure is strong or social environments that support substance abuse.
• Respond with effective refusal messages to direct pressure to engage in substance use with an effective refusal message. How to say NO!
• Practice conflict management skills to overcome peer and media pressures to smoke, drink or use drugs.
• Increase awareness of misleading messages by advertisers to promote the sale of tobacco products or alcoholic beverages. Use some good counter arguments.
• Show adaptive coping skills for relieving stress and anxiety such as behavioral relaxation techniques

Are there any current reality shows about teenagers that address such a long-term scenario 0f social media struggles?

Teens love watching videos on their phones and all other devices. They are our future and deserve better than what is happening especially as social media has become a gateway to increased abusive drug use. It’s not good enough just to research after the facts but actively engage them in real stories about problems and solutions.

They need to connect to how social media glamorizes substance abuse, hurts mental health, leads to more exposure to more such substances and offers another means of buying drugs.

They also need to know how to fight back by witnessing and understanding psychological factors, conflict management and social resistance skills.

What an exciting writing project for a talented script writer or videographer!

Annemarie Berukoff

Index for Timely Tale for Teen Girls Struggles, Regrets and Survival on Social Media with a Superpower Tool