Carpenter KA, Nguyen AT, Smith DA, Samori IA, Humphreys K, Lembke A, Kiang MV, Eichstaedt JC, Altman RB. Which social media platforms facilitate monitoring the opioid crisis?
MEDRXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR HEALTH SCIENCES 2024:2024.07.06.24310035. [PMID:
39006412 PMCID:
PMC11245080 DOI:
10.1101/2024.07.06.24310035]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/16/2024]
Abstract
Social media can provide real-time insight into trends in substance use, addiction, and recovery. Prior studies have used platforms such as Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), but evolving policies around data access have threatened these platforms' usability in research. We evaluate the potential of a broad set of platforms to detect emerging trends in the opioid epidemic. From these, we created a shortlist of 11 platforms, for which we documented official policies regulating drug-related discussion, data accessibility, geolocatability, and prior use in opioid-related studies. We quantified their volumes of opioid discussion, capturing informal language by including slang generated using a large language model. Beyond the most commonly used Reddit and X, the platforms with high potential for use in opioid-related surveillance are TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Leveraging many different social platforms, instead of a single platform, safeguards against sudden changes to data access and may better capture all populations that use opioids than any single platform.
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