Social Media Self-Efficacy And Its Relationship With Youth Readiness Toward Drug Prevention Education Programs

This study is aimed to examine how social media self-efficacy is associated with youth’s readiness for drug prevention programs. This study is a descriptive study that used quantitative and correlational methods. This study measured the level of self-efficacy of social media and the level of readiness for drug prevention programs based on (1) Perception of ATOD problems (2) Perception of Adolescent Access (3) Permissive Attitude towards Teen Use (4) Support for Prevention (5) Perception of Community Commitment. Pearson Correlation was also used to analyze the correlation between self-efficacy and readiness in youth. The respondents of this study consisted of N=261 youth in Teluk Intan and were randomly selected from educational institutions, government agencies, youth associations and organizations, and daily secondary schools. A set of questionnaires containing two inventories namely the Social Media Self-Efficacy Inventory and Drug Community Readiness Survey were used to collect data. Data were analyzed and processed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27.0. The results showed a positive level of social media self-efficacy with the highest score of 226.92. Meanwhile, the level of youth readiness towards drug prevention programs with a high score of 23.45 refers to a permissive attitude towards youth use. Findings show that there is a significant relationship between social media self-efficacy and youth readiness toward drug prevention programs which is r=182, p=0.003. Thus, increases in social media self-efficacy toward drug prevention programs are associated with increases in youth readiness. Some implications and recommendations for future studies have been discussed.