A analysis research revealed in Drug and Alcohol Review discovered that hashish consumption is especially depicted as optimistic on TikTok. Nonetheless, lead writer on the research, Brienna Rutherford, defined the thought behind the research.
“Social media is a giant a part of the trendy world, with adolescents reporting that they spend a median of eight hours on-line every single day,” mentioned Rutherford, a PhD candidate with College of Queensland in Australia. “Regardless of this excessive quantity of use, little is understood concerning the potential dangers publicity to social media content material depicting substance use could have on viewers. Nonetheless, earlier than you’ll be able to assess the results of publicity, we have to know what content material is on the market and accessible.”
The research, entitled “Getting high for likes: Exploring cannabis-related content on TikTok,” establishes the intent of analyzing hashish content material on TikTok, which has over one billion customers, one-third of that are underneath 14 years of age. An estimated 63% of users between ages 12-17 use TikTok each day.
Seven main categories have been outlined, together with Humor/Leisure (71.74%), Experiences (42.90%), Way of life Acceptability (24.63%), Informative/How-To (7.5%), Creativity (5.4%), and Warning (2.7%).
“‘Humour/Leisure’ movies usually used comedic skits or storytimes to painting hashish use positively to viewers,” researchers wrote. “Movies regularly featured discussions of customers’ private hashish ‘Experiences’ by storytimes, re-enactments, and movies taken throughout energetic use. ‘Way of life Acceptability’ was additionally promoted utilizing hashtags related to pro-cannabis use communities (e.g. #cannamom, #stonersoftiktok, #stonertok).”
Researchers estimate that 54.14% of movies (seen collectively over 417 million occasions) have been portrayed as optimistic. Additionally, many of the TikTok customers on movies have been Caucasian males between 25-50 years of age. Of the movies analyzed for this research, solely 50 movies really depicted consumption, akin to smoking, vaping, or consuming edibles).
“The primary take-home level from this research is that there’s a excessive variety of cannabis-related movies on TikTok which are a) publicly accessible by way of hyperlinks (even with out accounts!), b) haven’t any age restrictions or content material warning banners, and c) are selling use of hashish to viewers,” Rutherford added. “Whereas many international locations are shifting in direction of legalization, that doesn’t imply hashish use is with out threat and none of this content material addresses the potential unfavourable well being penalties related to use.”
Rutherford defined the subsequent steps towards figuring out the impression of cannabis-related movies on TikTok. “The subsequent step is clearly to evaluate whether or not viewing this content material has any impression on viewers’ attitudes, behaviors or threat/norms perceptions round substance use,” mentioned Rutherford. “Publicity to text- or image-based substance use content material on platforms like Fb and Instagram have been proven to affect the probability of substance use, so it’s doubtless {that a} extra participating platform and content material sort (akin to TikTok’s short-form movies) could have an excellent bigger affect.”
Researchers additionally concluded that TikTok takes further precautions to warn viewers {that a} particular video accommodates hashish. That is equally performed with violent movies, or movies that may painting false data.
“TikTok has taken some extra steps to manage the supply of substance associated content material by eradicating entry to hashtags which explicitly reference substance use (e.g., #hashish). Nonetheless, the movies themselves stay accessible—they’re simply not saved underneath these hashtags,” Rutherford mentioned. “Eradicating the content material or hashtags may not be an efficient strategy as creators subvert hashtag guidelines anyway (utilizing numerical values as a substitute of letters ‘#w33d’ to get across the specific reference guidelines).”
Social media channels have turn out to be residence to many distinctive hashish creators, though many different providers akin to Fb or Instagram have regularly banned customers who create hashish content material. Excessive profile content material creators akin to YouTuber Chrissy Harless, whose account as soon as had 46,000 subscribers, was not too long ago terminated with out a proof.