JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Young adults involved in the justice system have high rates of substance use disorders and low rates of treatment engagement. Most justice-involved young adults are supervised in the community—not incarcerated in jail or prison—where they have ongoing access to substances and experience significant barriers to care. When they do engage in treatment, they tend to have worse outcomes than justice-involved adolescents and older adults. Despite the need to develop targeted treatments for young adults involved in the justice system, there are unique challenges to recruiting this population into clinical research. Digital health technology offers many novel avenues for 1) recruiting justice-involved young adults into clinical research studies and 2) disseminating substance use disorder treatments to justice-involved young adults. Because the vast majority of young adults regularly use one or more social media platforms, social media may offer a cost-effective and efficient way to achieve these goals.

Objective:

The current study describes the process and feasibility of using social media platforms (Facebook and Reddit) to recruit justice-involved young adults into clinical research. Justice-involved young adults recruited from these platforms completed a survey assessing acceptability of digital health interventions to address substance use in this population.

Methods:

Justice-involved young adults (ages 18-24) were recruited through paid advertisements placed on Facebook and Reddit. Participants responded to an online survey focused on their substance use, treatment utilization history, and acceptability of various digital health interventions focused on substance use.

Results:

A national sample of justice-involved young adults were successfully enrolled and completed the survey (N=131). Participants were racially diverse (6.1% American Indian, 20.6% Asian 17.6% Black, 19.8% Latinx, 6.1% Pacific Islander, 37.4% white, and 1.5% other). Advertisements were cost-effective ($0.66 per click on Facebook and $0.47 per click on Reddit). More than half of participants were on probation or parole in the past year (55%) and reported hazardous alcohol (52%) or drug (57%) use. Most (78%) were not currently participating in substance use treatment. Nearly 2/3 (63%) were willing to participate in one or more hypothetical digital health interventions.

Conclusions:

Social media is a feasible and cost-effective method for reaching justice-involved young adults to participate in substance use research trials. With limited budgets, researchers can reach a broad audience of young adults, many of whom could benefit from treatment but are not currently engaged in care. Proposed digital health interventions focusing on reducing substance use, such as private Facebook groups, text-message based appointment reminders and coaching, had high acceptability. Future work will build on these findings to develop substance use treatment interventions for this population.