Although the literature on adolescent health includes studies that incorporate youth perspectives via a participatory design, research that is designed, conducted, and presented by youth remains absent. This paper presents the work of 5 youth investigators on the intersecting topics of adolescent health and social media. Each of these youths was equipped with tools, knowledge, and mentorship for scientifically evaluating a research question. The youths developed a research question that aligned with their interests and filled a gap that they identified in the literature. The youths, whose projects are featured in this paper, designed and conducted their own research project, drafted their own manuscript, and revised and resubmitted a draft based on reviewer input. Each youth worked with a research mentor; however, the research questions, study designs, and suggestions for future research were their own.

UNSTRUCTURED While the literature on adolescent health and social media use is full of studies incorporating youth perspectives through participatory design, too little of this research is actually designed, conducted, and presented by youth. Thus, the following paper presents the work of five youth investigators on the topic of adolescent health and social media. All youth were equipped with tools and knowledge to scientifically evaluate a research question of their choice. The youth whose projects are featured here designed and conducted their own research project, drafted their own manuscript, and revised and resubmitted that draft based on reviewer input. Although all youth worked with research mentors, all ideas and suggestions for future research are their own.

BACKGROUND Opioid use is a leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States. Past studies have shown that analyzing opioid-related social media has the potential to reveal patterns of opioid abuse offline. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to examine how users are posting about pro and anti- opioid use on Reddit. METHODS There were 100 posts selected from the Reddit online community r/Opioids. The comments and upvotes for each of the posts were collected. The posts were also run through Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software with 16 variables. RESULTS There were on average more comments for anti- opioid posts (M= 9.06 , SD =12.22) than for the average number of comments for pro- opioid posts (M=14.88, SD= 17.89) t(81)= (2.79), p = 0.0065 < 0.05. There were on average more upvotes for anti- opioid posts (M= 1.58 , SD =1.98) than for the average number of comments for pro- opioid posts (M= 41.67, SD= 16.36), t(81)= (16.84), p = 0.0001. For LIWC variable Focus Present was found to be more significant in anti- opioid posts (M= 11.19, SD =5.79) than for pro- opioid posts (M= 15.58, SD=9.81), t(98)= (2.82), p =.0207. Focus future was also found to be more significant in anti- opioid posts (M= 1.63 , SD =1.86) than for pro- opioid posts (M=1.63, SD= 1.86), t(98)= (2.84), p = .0244. CONCLUSIONS Although there were on average more pro-opioid use posts in the online community, there seemed to be more engagement and support for the anti-opioid use posts. For the LIWC variables that were analyzed, Focus Present and Focus Future were found to be significant. This suggests that some users may be more likely to use vocabulary pertaining to future and present situations while looking at the health risks of opioids.

UNSTRUCTURED No abstract/not applicable