Social networks show drug use follows lack of sleep

PARENTS looking to steer their teens away from drugs may want to encourage them stay in bed longer. Lack of sleep seems to lead to increased drug use – not the other way around, as many researchers previously concluded – and this is likely to be a pattern of behaviour that teenagers acquire from their friends.

“Your sleep is going to influence my sleep and that will make me more likely to do drugs,” says Sara Mednick, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study.

Establishing whether one behaviour leads to another…