Study analyzes cannabis content on TikTok, including youth concerns

A research study published in Drug and Alcohol Review found that cannabis use on TikTok is mostly portrayed as positive. However, the study’s lead author, Brienna Rutherford, explained the thinking behind the study.

“Social media is a huge part of the modern world, with youngsters reporting that they spend an average of eight hours online each day,” said Rutherford, a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia. “Despite this high volume of use, little is known about the potential risks that exposure to social media content depicting substance use can pose to viewers. However, before you can assess the impact of exposure, we need to know what content is available and accessible.”

The study, titled “Getting high for likes: Exploring cannabis-related content on TikTok,” establishes the intent to analyze cannabis content on TikTok, which has over a billion users, a third of whom are under the age of 14. An estimated 63% of users between the ages of 12 and 17 use TikTok on a daily basis.

Seven main categories were defined, including Humor/Entertainment (71.74%), Experiences (42.90%), Lifestyle Acceptance (24.63%), Informative/Instructional (7.5%), Creativity (5.4%) ) and warning (2.7%). .

“Humor/entertainment videos often used comedic skits or storytimes to positively portray cannabis use to viewers,” the researchers wrote. “The videos often included discussions of users’ personal cannabis ‘experiences’ through narratives, re-enactments and videos recorded during active use. Lifestyle Acceptability was also promoted through hashtags associated with pro-cannabis use communities (e.g., #cannamom, #stonersoftiktok, #stonertok).”

Researchers estimate that 54.14% of videos (over 417 million total views) were viewed as positive. Also, most TikTok users in videos were Caucasian males between 25 and 50 years old. Of the videos analyzed for this study, only 50 videos actually showed consumption, such as smoking, vaping, or eating edibles).

“The key finding from this study is that there are a large number of cannabis-related videos on TikTok that a) are publicly available via links (even without accounts!), b) have no age restrictions or content warning banners, and c) the Encourage cannabis use among viewers,” added Rutherford. “While many countries are moving toward legalization, that doesn’t mean cannabis use is risk-free, and none of this content addresses the potential negative health consequences associated with use.”

Rutherford outlined the next steps to identifying the impact of cannabis-related videos on TikTok. “The next step, of course, is to assess whether viewing this content is affecting viewers’ attitudes, behavior, or risk/norm perceptions of substance use,” Rutherford said. “Exposure to text- or image-based content about substance use on platforms like Facebook and Instagram has been shown to affect the likelihood of substance use, so it’s likely that a more engaging platform and content type (like TikTok’s short videos) can have an even bigger impact.”

Researchers also concluded that TikTok is taking extra precautions to warn viewers that a particular video contains cannabis. This happens in a similar way with violent videos or videos that may contain false information.

“TikTok has taken some additional steps to regulate the availability of substance-related content by removing access to hashtags that explicitly refer to substance use (e.g. #cannabis). However, the videos themselves remain accessible — they’re just no longer stored under those hashtags,” Rutherford said. “Removing the content or hashtags may not be an effective approach either, since the creators are subverting the hashtag rules anyway (using numeric values ​​instead of the letters ‘#w33d’ to circumvent the explicit referencing rules).”

Social media channels have become many unique cannabis creators, although many other services such as Facebook or Instagram have frequently banned users creating cannabis content. High-profile content creators like YouTuber Chrissy Harless, whose account once had 46,000 subscribers, were recently terminated without explanation.