R is for Reefer Madness

If you believe the news, the general teenage population seems to have a death wish. Every few months, the youths discover some dangerous new hobby and it takes off like wildfire, placing the future of society in jeopardy.

Obviously, society has yet to implode, even though there are. It helps that a lot of the trends-- and a lot of the danger-- are at least partly fictional. Ironically, though, the Everyone Panic Now scare tactics often have a quantifiable effect on the real world, and it's exactly the opposite of the one they intended. 
The best-known example is the anti-drug scare campaign D.A.R.E., which has been found in several large studies to be either utterly ineffective at preventing drug use, or worse, actually increase the probability that someone will do drugs. But there are dozens of other instances of moral panics throughout human history, covering everything from worries over excessive tea consumption to Satanism.

While some of these panics have roots in real dangers, a great many of them are the stuff of pure fiction. Unfortunately, the consequences can run twofold. First, panic over the exaggerated or fictitious threat leads to bad policy decisions. One notable case is the many people falsely accused-- and sometimes imprisoned for--Satanic child abuse. Second, the imagined threat can actually make the jump from speculation to reality, as people rush to try the dangerous, thrilling thing that everyone else is allegedly doing.

We are emotional creatures, but we also need to remember that fiction and news media deliberately play on those emotions.