Keeping young people safe online
Illicit drugs on social media
Illicit drugs are increasingly advertised and sold on popular social media platforms. This is alarming, as exposure to risky online content has been found to correlate with viewers' own risk-taking actions.
My PhD research aims to understand and prevent the sale and advertisements of illicit drugs to young people on social media.
I am currently being supervised by Professor Shane Johnson, Dr. Marie Vasek and Dr. Enrico Mariconti.
What I'm working on
Below you can find different projects that I'm currently working on as part of my PhD.
Multidisciplinary Scoping Review
I conducted a multidisciplinary scoping review to understand the state of the literature on the sale and advertisement of illicit drugs on social media. After reviewing over 4 000 records, I created a large-scale dataset on keywords and emojis associated with illegal drug ads, which was shared with social media companies. The study, now published in Drug Alcohol Review, informed the design of a national online survey.
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First National Survey of Drugs on Social Media
As the second project of my PhD, I carried out a large-scale survey of students aged 13 to 18 (N=1151), distributed to UK secondary schools. Most participants encountered drug-related content on social media, with 29% having seen illicit drugs advertised for sale without actively searching for them. I also found significant associations between young people’s exposure to content and decreased risk perceptions, along with increased interest in and intention to buy illicit drugs. These preliminary findings have been disseminated to governmental bodies like the Home Office, Ofcom and the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).
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Criminal offences in AR gaming / Metaverse ready-games
The fusion of digital and physical spaces yielded by augmented reality (AR) and location-based games (LBGs) has created hybrid spaces where in-game features have repercussions in the physical world. I am carrying out research to understand how specific features in such games could be maliciously exploited and how we can prevent this and make online gaming spaces safer for users.
