New research from Massey University shows young people buying and selling drugs on apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat could be harming their job prospects in the future.
Digital trace tools were now available to track online behaviour, no matter how small scale.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, public health researcher and co-writer of the study Robyn Van Der Sanden said using social media to buy and sell illicit drugs was a growing trend on a global level.
She said about 22% of the sample size in the study had used social media platforms for this purpose in the last six months, with young people more likely to have done so.
"A lot of these people, because they're so peripherally involved, the risk of being caught by law enforcement is viewed as low.
"But, at the same time, a lot of them are very aware like 'look I don't want a criminal record because I know it really disadvantages me in life'.'"
Pushing advertisements at users
Van Der Sanden said people were generally becoming more aware that social media platforms might identify them as a potential drug user, as it would recommend advertisements to them.
However, some didn't necessarily "connect the dots" that this could have flow on effects their lives.
"There's kind of this resignation to the fact your data is out there and for all of us, not just young people buying and selling drugs, it's likely to come back and haunt us in our later lives."
Van Der Sanden said there was space to help young people understand the privacy risks of using social media to buy and sell drugs, but ultimately, data collection was hard to escape in this day and age.
She added there wa a broader conversation to be had about regulating the big digital players who were using the data, so people could have more security surrounding their own personal data.
For more on Van Der Sanden and her findings, click the video at the top of this article.
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