Recreational Cannabis and Social Media Use: A Correlational Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND
In the last decade, recreational cannabis has been legalized in several jurisdictions across continents, including parts of the United States and Canada, while numerous countries have moved towards similar reforms. In Québec (Canada), cannabis is a legal product since 2018 and is second only to alcohol as the most widely used psychoactive substance among the population, with a consumption rate of 20% in 2021. Regular cannabis use has been linked to cannabis use disorder, problematic use of other psychoactive substances and behavioural addictions. Widespread availability of internet and mobile devices has led 91% of Canadians to use social media platforms, while over 50% of them reported spending 2 hours or more per day on the internet in 2022. Current literature reveals an increase in the number of people presenting with problematic internet use and social media addiction with great impacts on personal and professional lives. The present study aims to characterize social media use and problematic use within an adult population of recreational cannabis users.  
METHODS
The project is a correlational cross-sectional study. A self-reported online questionnaire was used to assess the sociodemographic profile, cannabis and psychoactive substances use, internet and social media use and mental health profile of the participants. The sample consisted of participants aged 18 years old and above, residing in Québec (Canada), speaking English or French and reporting having used recreational cannabis at least once a week in the last year. A total of 1500 participants were surveyed, with a recruitment strategy implemented by a specialized firm. Mixed methods included descriptive methods (description of participants’ profile, cannabis/internet/social media use profile, identification of variables predisposing to problematic social media use including fear of missing out, consumption characteristics, etc.) and logistic regressions (independent variables such as social media use in terms of content/hours/frequency/duration and dependent variables such as mood changes, loss of control and altered functioning).
RESULTS
Data collection is currently underway.  Preliminary results will be presented at Lisbon Addictions 2024. 
CONCLUSION
To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore social media and cannabis use and problematic use among adults by identifying problematic use, characterizing its consumption and impacts, assessing the presence of contributing and predicting factors such as fear of missing out and identifying the presence of concomitant use. Our work will help public health authorities implement evidence-based harm reduction interventions, guide clinicians in their decision-making and assessment of patients presenting with behavioural addictions, raise awareness among industry about the addictive risks of internet-based socializing platforms and help improve the life of millions of social media users that could be at risk of addiction.