JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social media platforms, including Reddit, are playing a critical role in supporting individuals struggling with substance use disorder (SUD) and recovery. Reddit's large user base, diverse communities, and anonymity make it a useful platform for substance use research. Despite a growing body of literature studying substance use on Reddit, challenges and limitations must be carefully considered. However, no systematic scoping review has been conducted on the use of Reddit as a data source for substance use research.

Objective:

This review aims to investigate the use of Reddit for studying substance use by examining previous studies’ objectives, reasons, limitations, and methods for using Reddit. Additionally, we seek to discuss the implications and contributions of previous studies and identify gaps in the literature that require further attention.

Methods:

Seven databases were searched using keyword combinations including "Reddit" and substance-related keywords in April 2022. The initial search resulted in 456 articles, and 227 remained after removing duplicates. After the screening, a total of 60 articles met the eligibility criteria for the review, with 57 articles identified from the initial database search and 3 from the ancestry-search. A codebook was developed, and qualitative content analysis was performed to extract relevant evidence related to the research questions.

Results:

The use of Reddit for studying substance use has grown steadily since 2015, with a sharp increase in 2021. The primary objective is to identify trends and patterns in various types of substance use discussions (52/60, 86.7%). Reddit is also used to explore unique user experiences, propose methodologies, investigate user interactions, and develop interventions. 9 reasons for using Reddit to study substance use are grouped into data-related reasons (e.g., anonymity, first-hand experience) and platform-related reasons (e.g., popularity, subreddits). However, 7 limitations are also noted, such as low representativeness and lack of demographic information. Most studies use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for data collection and quantitative approaches for analysis, with few employing qualitative approaches. Machine learning algorithms are commonly used for natural language processing tasks. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications and contributions of the included articles are summarized and discussed. The most prevalent practical implications are investigating trending topics in Reddit discussions, providing recommendations for clinical practices and policies, and comparing Reddit discussions on substance use across various sources.

Conclusions:

This systematic scoping review provides an overview of Reddit's use as a data source for substance use research. While the limitations of Reddit data must be considered, analyzing it can be useful for understanding trends and user experiences related to substance use. Our review also highlights gaps in the literature and suggests avenues for future research.