EPQ presentation

Is digital media normalising drug use in teenagers?

journey of my project

conent

the research process

my final product

evaluation of my project

question time

what is my Topic about?

why did i choose this topic?

• Does digital media make drugs look normal to teenagers
• Focusing on social media and tv series
• Is there ways to regulate this?

• It is a mixture of subjects I really enjoy
• I found the topic really interesting
• curiosity as to if there was a link
• links to my career

My aims and objectives

Research skills

time managment

self confidence

• learning to manage 3 A-levels and EPQ
• part-time job
• beneficial skill to have in any workplace

• Learning how to do things on my own
• improve public speaking and presentation skills
• Having confidence in the conclusions i came to

• Being able to know how to effectively research
• know how to use my research to prove my point in my dissertation
• learning how to write academically
• will help in future career and university

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• Overall I completed 5 SWOT analysis on 5 different questions
• They all focused on a crime being committed so I knew this was something I wanted to focus on

My inital ideas and how did I manage my time

• I used two ways to manage my project and time effectively
• This was through keeping deadlines in my personal diary and also through my project timeline for main deadlines

websites - I used these to find out information about how drugs affected your brain and also to find case studies. As well as using it to find other information. I also used websites to look at the statistics of TV programmes and social media research carried out - I also used a lot of sources that had already been carried out research on my topic. I found this to be very useful like the NHS report every year on the Misuse of drugs in teenagers in England and Wales which. Television programmes - I used two TV series. These were Afterlife and Euphoria. I watched these to see how they represented drugs. social media - I used Tiktok mainly to look at how drugs were represented on social media. I found this useful as I was able to find it for myself and refer back to it.

My research

Strengths

Weaknesses

• I would have liked to use more sources that were not all online

• There were too many sources for series narrowing it down was quite difficult

• however sometimes the detail I needed was not in-depth enough

• I did not feel that I was limited in the research I needed
• The NHS is a trusted government source
• Was able to conduct research I could interepret providing deeper meaning

STRENGTHS and weaknesses of my research

why did I not conduct primary research?

• the topic can be seen as sensitive as it is around drugs
• researching under 16s comes with a lot of ethical issues.
• If I only researched 16+ my data would not be reliable as it would only answer my question for a small sample of people

How many people in this room have some form of social media that they use regularly? How many people in this room watch any form of television from either a TV or streaming services such as Netflix?

Euphoria

After Life

• Looking at how drugs are represented in times of grief and forgetting your emotions

• Looking at how drugs are represented by teenagers who are struggling with addiction

my two tv programmes

• Since 2011 attitudes toward drugs in teenagers have eased with more teenagers thinking that trying drugs is acceptable - NHS 2020
• The number of people who thought that doing drugs to forget your problems increased from 20% to 30% - NHS 2020
• Stanford university did a study that found people who spent more time on social media were more likely to see vaping and taking drugs as more normal
• The university of Columbia found the same results correlating social media to drug use normalisation

My results and findings

Overall the conclusion I came to was that digital media can normalise drug use in teenagers by creating an image that they are only beneficial and have no negative effects. However, there have been suggestions that drug usage in teenagers is decreasing rather an increasing meaning that even though it is becoming more normalised there is no evidence to prove they are actually taking the drugs.

My conclusion

how has the EPQ benefited me as a person?

What would I do diffrently next time?

• Has taught me skills I did not priortise before
• Has taught me how to write an academic paper with refrences
• Presentatations have benefited my self confidence

• I would spend more time narrowing down my question
• I would spend more time evaluating my sources
• I would start preparing sources to be used earlier
• I would start writing my EPQ final disseration earlier

Advice I would give to future EPQ students

• Start your research early
• Start writing your draft earlier so the editing process is not so rushed
• Its okay to make mistakes!
• Make sure you are personally intrested in your topic
• Update your diary every week to not fall far behind

THANKS

any questions?