A survey of recent Raman scattering studies on the interstitial hydrogen molecule (H2) in Si and GaAs is presented. It is shown that properties of H2 strongly depend on the nuclear spin state I. In either material, para-H2 (I=0) is unstable against irradiation with band gap light. In the case of Si, para-H2 also preferentially disappears from the Raman spectra in the course of storage at room temperature in the dark. Possible explanations for this surprising behavior are discussed and compared with the latest infrared absorption studies.