Impact of social media “challenges” on poison center case volume for intentional ingestions among school-aged children: an observational study

Abstract

Introduction

Mental health problems among youth have escalated over the past decade, with increased rates of self-harm, including suicide attempts by ingestion. Social media use has been linked to youth mental health, including “challenges” urging youth to ingest substances for recreational and other purposes. We hypothesized that social media challenges for particular substances would temporally correspond with increased ingestions of these substances.

Methods

We identified peak Google Trends search times for social media ingestion challenges involving diphenhydramine, laundry pods, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and used data from America’s Poison Centers National Poison Data System to plot reported ingestions 3 months before and after peak searches in school-aged children.

Results

There were 2,169 individuals in the analysis. Diphenhydramine was the most frequently reported ingestion for misuse/abuse and suicidal purposes (n = 266 and 1,609, respectively). For all ingestions together, 45 percent (n = 979) had a moderate health effect, and 6.35 percent (n = 137) had a major health effect. Time of peak searches corresponded with increased ingestions for each substance.

Discussion

We found a temporal relationship between peak Google Trends searches for ingestion challenges and ingestions of that substance reported to United States poison centers. Compared to misuse/abuse ingestions, most suicidal ingestions peaked 1–2 months later, suggesting a public health opportunity for intervention.

Limitations

This retrospective observational study does not establish causal effect. All data are a result of self-reporting of the exposures, which may lead to a reporting bias. Google Trends is not the only search engine and likely underestimates the true incidence of social media posts.

Conclusions

Additional research is needed on the relationship between social media and youth mental health, particularly around “challenges” that place youths’ health at risk. There may be opportunities for intervention to decrease medical and mental health sequelae of these challenges.

Keywords:

• Ingestions
• adolescent
• self-harm
• social media
• ingestion challenges

Acknowledgements

America’s Poisons Centers made the National Poison Data System available to the authors for this study. The findings and conclusions reported are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the official position of America’s Poisons Centers. America’s Poison Centers maintains the National Poison Data System, which houses de-identified records of self-reported information from callers to the country’s Poison Centers. National Poison Data System data do not reflect the entire universe of United States exposures and incidences related to any substances. Exposures do not necessarily represent a poisoning or overdose, and America’s Poison Centers are not able to completely verify the accuracy of every report.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.