Identifying alcohol and other drug usage among adolescents in India and suggesting a mechanism for rehabilitation using social media contents

Abstract

Adolescent drug usage like tobacco, alcohol and other substances is a major public health problem that causes more annual deaths. Conventional methods for monitoring adolescent drug consumption are based on surveys, which have many limitations and are difficult to scale. With the growing popularity of social networking sites and the proliferation of mobile devices and camera phones, new opportunities and challenges emerge as people can now actively generate contents that provide a unique compilation of information that is more frequently updated and self-representative than traditional mode of data collection. Hence, a novel approach to monitoring underage drug use by analysing the content from social media networks in order to overcome many of the limitations of conventional approaches will be attempted in this proposal. This project aims to identify the conditions and behaviours of youth who use drugs from their social media activities and help them to come out of their problem by changing their mood with the appropriate content available from the social media. This project will also help the policy makers and health professionals to enter into the world of youth and addressing their problem and to guide them in an efficient way than the traditional means of counselling.