Adolescent substance abuse is a major problem all over the world. Substances are consumed by both male and female adolescents, and pose a serious threat to the consumers and the society as at large. The causes of substance abuse are numerous and varied. It is imperative to seek ways to curb this malice that is threatening the welfare of Cameroonians; individually, economically and even socially. This study sets out to ascertain the extent to which the social media influence substance abuse among adolescents in urban schools in Cameroon, and to determine preventive strategies. The concurrent nested mixed method research design was used to carry out the study. The Simple Random sampling was adopted in the selection of public, mission and private schools from four regions of Cameroon, classrooms in each school and 375 students. Purposive sampling was used to select discipline masters and guidance counsellors. A questionnaire of 10 items was used to collect data from the students and an interview guide to collect data from the discipline masters and guidance counsellors. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using spearman rho test, through SPSS version 25.The findings showed that social media significantly predicted substance abuse among adolescent students (R= -0.258**, P= 0.000< 0.05). Finally, findings showed that at zero order correlation when the preventive strategies were not involved in the correlation analysis, the coefficient value was -0.374 but, when the correlation was controlled by the preventive strategies, the coefficient value increased from -0.374 to -0.908 of almost a perfect relationship (-1). The study concluded that the social media influence drug abuse among adolescent students in urban schools in Cameroon. From the study it was recommended that research be carried out to determine the effects of drugs on students’ performance, health and the society.
Adolescents, Substance abuse, drug abuse, social media
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