SynthesisAddiction (Abingdon, England)2023
#TurntTrending: a systematic review of substance use portrayals on social media platforms.
Synthesis in Addiction (Abingdon, England), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- #TurntTrending: a systematic review of substance use portrayals on social media platforms.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2023Pooled it
- Beyond the Law: A Qualitative Socio-Ecological Study of Substance Use Treatment Barriers and Adaptations in Ghana.Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing · 2026Article
- Scrolling into substance use: Social media use frequency and substance use among U.S. high school students.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- Social media use, smoking expectancies, and nicotine experimentation in early adolescents: A prospective cohort study.The American journal on addictions · 2026Article
- Characterizing In Vivo Exposure to Alcohol Content in the Media: Media Platform, Engagement, and Associations With Attitudes.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Trends in substance use and associations with internet use among Japanese high school students: A nationwide survey, 2018-2024.PCN reports : psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2026Article
- Bidirectional Associations Between Engagement with Tobacco Information on Social Media and Young Adults' Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Cross-Lagged Analysis.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Global substance use disorders burden from 1990 to 2021: post-COVID shifts and widening inequalities.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- The relation between social media use and novel psychoactive substance use among adolescents - the mediating role of internalizing and externalizing behaviors.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Multi-level Risk and Protective Factors for Vaping Onset and Escalation Among Youth: a Focus on LGBTQ + Disparities.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2026Review
- Representation of drug addiction in Pakistani print media: A Latent Dirichlet Allocation analysis.PloS one · 2026Article
- Cannabis expectancies mediate the association between social media use and cannabis experimentation in early adolescents: A prospective cohort study.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Article
- Blasting Off Again: An Observational Study on Substance Use Content Exposure in Pokémon Twitch Streams.AJPM focus · 2025Article
- Alcohol Promotion via User-Generated Content on Instagram and TikTok: A Content Analysis.Drug and alcohol review · 2025Article
- #Opioids: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Top Opioid-Related Content on TikTok.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2025Article
- Qualitative analysis of how U.S. college students construct their alcohol-related content identities via social media.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2025Article
- Social media use, cannabis attitudes, and cannabis use among adolescents: An observational study.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- A Narrative Review of Nicotine and Alcohol Addiction Recovery Content on TikTok.Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2025Article
- Content Analysis of the Portrayal of Prescription Stimulants on TikTok.Journal of attention disorders · 2025Article
- Which social media platforms facilitate monitoring the opioid crisis?PLOS digital health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimsThere is a growing body of literature exploring the types of substance-related content and their portrayals on various social media platforms. We aimed to summarize how content related to substances is portrayed on various social media platforms.
methodsThis systematic review was pre-registered on PROSPERO (ref: CRD42021291853). A comprehensive search was conducted in the databases of PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO and Web of Science in April 2021. Original qualitative studies published post-2004 that included thematic and sentiment analyses of social media content on tobacco, alcohol, psychostimulant, e-cigarette, cannabis, opiate, stimulant/amphetamine, inhalant and novel psychoactive substance were included. Social media platforms were defined as online web- or application-based platforms that allowed users to generate content and interact via 'liking', comment or messaging features. Only studies that included summative and/or thematic content analyses of substance-related social media content were included.
resultsA total of 73 studies, which covered 15 905 182 substance-related posts on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok and Weibo, were identified. A total of 76.3% of all substance-related content was positive in its depiction of substance use, with 20.2% of content depicting use negatively. Sentiment regarding opiate use however was commonly negative (55.5%). Most studies identified themes relating to Health, Safety and Harms (65.0%) of substance use. Themes relating to Promotions/Advertisements (63.3%), Informative content (55.0%) and Use behaviours (43.3%) were also frequently identified.
conclusionsSubstance-related content that promotes engagement with substance use or actively depicts use appears to be widely available on social media. The large public presence of this content may have concerning influences on attitudes, behaviours and risk perceptions relating to substance use, particularly among the most vulnerable and heaviest users of social media-adolescents and young adults.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.