From #Dr00gtiktok to #harmreduction: Exploring Substance Use Hashtags on TikTok

Abstract

TikTok has emerged as a major source of information and social interaction for youth, raising urgent questions about how substance use discourse manifests and circulates on the platform. This paper presents the first comprehensive analysis of publicly visible, algorithmically surfaced substance-related content on TikTok, drawing on hashtags spanning all major substance categories. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines social network analysis with qualitative content coding, we examined 2,333 substance-related hashtags, identifying 16 distinct hashtag communities and characterizing their structural and thematic relationships. Our network analysis reveals a highly interconnected small-world structure in which recovery-focused hashtags such as \textit{\#addiction}, \textit{\#recovery}, and \textit{\#sober} serve as central bridges between communities. Qualitative analysis of 351 representative videos shows that Recovery Advocacy content (33.9\%) and Satirical content (28.2\%) dominate, while direct substance depiction appears in only 26\% of videos, with active use shown in just 6.5\% of them. These findings suggest that the algorithmically surfaced layer of substance-related discourse on TikTok is predominantly oriented toward recovery, support, and coping rather than explicit promotion of substance use. We further show that hashtag communities and video content are closely aligned, indicating that substance-related discourse on TikTok is shaped through organic community formation within platform affordances rather than widespread adversarial evasion of moderation. This work contributes to social computing research by showing how algorithmic visibility on TikTok shapes the organization of substance-related discourse and the formation of recovery and support communities.