Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Jan 21, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 22, 2018 - May 29, 2018
Date Accepted: May 29, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Perceived Attitudes About Substance Use in Anonymous Social Media Posts Near College Campuses: Observational Study
Background:
Substance use is a major issue for adolescents and young adults, particularly college students. With the importance of peer influence and the ubiquitous use of social media among these age groups, it is important to assess what is discussed on various social media sites regarding substance use. One particular mobile app (Yik Yak) allowed users to post any message anonymously to nearby persons, often in areas with close proximity to major colleges and universities.
Objective:
This study describes the content, including attitude toward substances, of social media discussions that occurred near college campuses and involved substances.
Methods:
A total of 493 posts about drugs and alcohol on Yik Yak were reviewed and coded for their content, as well as the poster’s attitude toward the substance(s) mentioned.
Results:
Alcohol (226/493, 45.8%), marijuana (206/493, 41.8%), and tobacco (67/493, 13%) were the most frequently mentioned substances. Posts about use (442/493) were generally positive toward the substance mentioned (262/442, 59.3%), unless the post was about abstinence from the substance. Additionally, posts that commented on the substance use of others tended to be less positive (18/92, 19.6% positive) compared to posts about one’s own use (132/202, 65.3% positive).
Conclusions:
This study provides a description of anonymous discussions on or near college campuses about drugs and alcohol, which serves as an example of data that can be examined from social media sites for further research and prevention campaigns.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.