Adderall on Twitter

                Adderall is becoming a more common substance abused by college every day.  Students use Adderall to help cram for important test like midterms or finals.  When they are not using Adderall to study they use it party drug to increase alertness and mood.  Adderall is a mixed salt amphetamine used originally to treat ADHD.  The rate of Adderall abuse is found to be higher in colleges with higher academic standards.  It is hypnotized that the increased pressure to well in academics at these schools leads more students to abuse Adderall.  Social media has become a new way to monitor and understand the Adderall abuse problem.  Studies have shown that online resources can be used to effectly to understand human health problems and their determinants.  A group of researchers decided to use twitter to help gain more knowledge in Adderall abuse as a study aid for college kids. 

                To retrieve their information they searched for the “Adderall” on twitters database of tweets.  They then checked the location of where the tweets were sent and took their population from tweets that were sent in locations with colleges.  The tweets were then read through and all tweets sent advertising the sale of Adderall were removed from the population. 

                In the results researchers found that Adderall was most commonly tweeted on Wednesdays and tweeted the least on Sunday.  Tweets mentioning Adderall were also the most frequent during months that had final exams.  They found that only one in ten tweets mention the adverse side effects of the drug.  They also found that was most commonly tweeted about when all-nighters were mentioned.  Researchers found that the majority of tweets were about abusing Adderall to perform better in school.

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/pmc/articles/PMC3636321/?report=classic