Session: Using Social Media to Understand and Address Substance Use and Addiction (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

Social influences play a key role in shaping health behaviors.  With the recent surge of social media, online user-generated content and social networking sites (such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) are becoming an integral part of the communication landscape.  Consequently, social media are increasingly affecting people’s everyday behaviors, including their attitudes to issues relevant to health.  It is estimated that approximately 95% of teenagers have online access and 75% have access through mobile phones.  Approximately 80% regularly access social media/social networking sites. This session shares current finding from NIH-funded research measuring the reach, engagement, and behavioral/health impacts of social media-based interventions for the screening, prevention, and treatment, of the use and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) use and addiction. 

Abstract One reports on the the feasibility of using the social networking site Facebook to recruit parents to complete a self-directed parenting program to prevent teen alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use and to examine the utility and acceptability of using Facebook to enhance and support this program. While there is strong evidence that parenting programs are effective in preventing adolescent substance use., low recruitment and retention rates greatly reduce the widespread public health impact parent training programs could have. This study has the potential to significantly increase the public health impact of parenting programs to reduce teen alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use if using social media tools, like Facebook, for recruitment and program support proves to be feasible.

Abstract Two derives and validates metrics of alcohol consumption from information posted on Twitter by underage youth from all 50 US states, and establish the relationship between these social media sourced metrics and surrounding state alcohol policies. Study findings will enable a new approach to population surveillance of underage drinking that will complement traditional systems and advance public health methods for monitoring underage drinking and harms and generate a paradigm shift for policy evaluation by enabling real-time investigation of impacts at fine temporal- spatial resolution.

Abstract Three provides information on the design and initial challenges of a newly-funded study that is recruiting adolescents and emerging adults using Facebook ads, and conducting online e-screening, and enrolling risky drinkers in a randomized controlled trial comparing three 8-week social media intervention conditions: Intervention + Diffusion Incentives, Intervention Only, and an e-news attention control condition. Thus, we will enhance and vary dose to provide clues to the type of content that maximizes diffusion and outcomes. These innovative design features will provide the critical next step in harnessing social media to reduce alcohol misuse, which could have enormous public health impact by altering the alcohol use trajectories of youth.