Using Social Media to Engage Justice-Involved Young Adults in Digital Health Interventions for Substance Use: Pilot...

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Substance Use Disorders
• Clinical Research Recruitment

Background:

• Justice-involved young adults exhibit high rates of substance use disorders (SUDs) and low treatment engagement.
• Community-supervised young adults face barriers to care and have poorer treatment outcomes.
• Recruiting this population for clinical research presents unique challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility and process of recruiting justice-involved young adults via social media (Facebook, Reddit).
• To evaluate the acceptability of digital health interventions for SUDs in this population.

Main Methods:

• Justice-involved young adults (18-24 years) recruited through paid Facebook and Reddit advertisements.
• Participants completed a web-based survey on substance use, treatment history, and digital health intervention acceptability.
• Recruitment utilized targeted social media advertising.

Main Results:

• Successfully enrolled a diverse national sample (N=131) of justice-involved young adults.
• Advertisements proved cost-effective (Facebook: $0.66/click, Reddit: $0.47/click).
• Over half reported hazardous alcohol or drug use, and most were not in treatment; 62.6% were willing to try digital interventions.

Conclusions:

• Social media offers a feasible, cost-effective strategy for recruiting justice-involved young adults into SUD research.
• Digital health interventions (e.g., private groups, SMS reminders, coaching) show high acceptability.
• Findings support developing targeted digital SUD treatments for this underserved population.