I have alarming news. Prepare yourself to be alarmed. You may also want to prepare those around you. "Hold on, everyone," you might say if you're a considerate person. "Chances are I'm about to become alarmed. If you don't want to be alarmed yourself, I suggest you leave the room or ignore me."
Trust me, people are going to be happy to leave the room or ignore you. They've actually kind of been looking for an excuse.
Now that everyone has proper notification, here's the alarming news: A study has determined that something popular among teenagers is actually bad for them and for society. I know! Weird!
The evil popular thing this time around is social networking. Even as we speak, social networking is getting high-fives from previous teen immoralities like texting, videogames, rap music, role-playing games, heavy metal music, long hair, rock music, comic books, jazz music, chewing gum, novels, card games and music.
Apparently teenagers who use social networks are more likely to drink, smoke, take drugs and presumably worship Satan in his dark majesty than teenagers who don't use social networks.
I'm sure your reaction is the same as mine: "There are teenagers who don't use social networks?" I'm guessing they don't use social networks because the patriarch of the compound has declared TCP/IP a tool of the secular conspiracy. Which, to be fair, it kind of is.
If I'm right -- and I haven't been wrong since March 2000, when I took my entire savings out of Apple stock and invested it in Pets.com -- the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which conducted the research, has the situation exactly backward.
Facebook doesn't cause drug abuse; drug abuse makes people turn to Facebook.
Here's the evidence: People on drugs do things that are eerily similar to popular Facebook activities. Clearly, social networking just gives various tweakers, stoners and trippers a venue for their drug-fueled antics.
Unconvinced? Check out this list of various recreational drugs and the way they make you act like a hard-core Facebooker:
Alcohol
Drives you to track down and bother people you broke up with years ago.
LSD
Convinces you that you have discovered the secrets of the universe and that you must share them with the world.
Marijuana
Makes you ask people you barely know to help harvest your soybeans.
Ecstacy
"I have hundreds of friends!"
Speed
Makes you stay awake for days in a row doing nothing productive.
PCP
Spurs you to poke people with no regard for the consequences.
Heroin
"This was fun at first, but now I hate it and yet I'm going to spend my entire life doing it."
Hashish
Makes you decide after careful consideration that, if you were a Star Wars bounty hunter, you'd be IG-88.
Ketamine
Makes you like everything.
Cocaine
Fills you with the paranoid fear that Mark Zuckerberg knows your darkest secrets and is sharing them with everyone.
Cigarettes
Forces you to stop whatever you're doing for 10 minutes every hour to get your fix.
Glue
Makes you realize, somewhere deep inside you, that you are a terrible person.
Crack
Eventually you lose contact with everyone who isn't also addicted to it.
Steroids
Makes you think you've convinced everyone you're naturally incredibly attractive, when in fact everyone knows you're cheating and you look pretty creepy anyway.
Caffeine
Compels you to compulsively spout whatever you're thinking about to anyone who will listen.
Opium
Is the opiate of the masses.
Image: Rex Dingler/Flickr
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a crackhead, an acidhead and a godhead.
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