Founder: Alyssa Shah
Alyssa serves on the New York City HRA Youth Leadership Council. When she’s not busy pursuing all of these activities she is on the volleyball court, you can find her working on her digital academy to educate teens on substance abuse.
“With more than 3.6M youth vaping, it is important for parents and youth to know the facts. ”
Social media can have a powerful influence on users and it has enticed a whole new generation to vape. Although vaping and inhaling the vapor of an e-cigarette is illegal for adolescents under the age of 18, it has become an epidemic in this age group.
JUUL is just one version of an e-cigarette, a battery-operated device that looks like a USB, and very popular among teens. Social media is a key contributor to the Vaping epidemic amongst youth in the United States.
Sales of e-cigarettes have increased exponentially in recent years according to the National Institute of Health. E-cigarettes sales increased from $2.5 billion in 2014 to $3.4 billion in early February of 2019.
From 2017 to 2018, e-cigarette use increased by 78% among high school students.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2018, 27.1% of high school students (4.04 million) and 7.2% of middle school students (840,000) used a tobacco product; remarkably, e-cigarettes accounted for 3.05 million high school and 570,000 middle school student tobacco users.
Children find it appealing because the JUUL looks like a USB so they can use it without being noticed. In addition to the chemicals inside the pods, the variety of flavors offered make it more desirable to youth including: mint, cucumber, mango, and fruit.
Alarmingly, the increase in vaping among teens can be attributed to social media. The CDC says that more than 10.5 million youth were exposed to e-cigarette advertisements through the internet (You Tube, Facebook, Instagram). The internet is the second most common source of e-cigarette advertising.
Research has shown that exposure to e-cigarette advertisements increases the likelihood of youth initiation, and rates of e-cigarette use are higher among youth exposed to more advertisements.
There is a direct correlation between dollars spent on e-cigarette advertising and use among youth. Companies specifically target youth by glamorizing vaping and by using themes of sex, rebellion, happiness, and friendship to advertise e-cigarettes, themes which are appealing and entice youth to vape.
Companies like JUUL advertise heavily on social media to promote their products and research suggests that higher youth vaping rates are attributed to their social branding and marketing strategies. They market their appealing flavors and promise to deliver vaping experiences like no other, and entice youth to vape by using ads with bright colors and models.
Over half of the ads used animation and some used social media influencers or celebrities. One study conducted at the University of Kansas found e-cigarette advertisements triggered high levels of brain activation in areas associated with cognitive control, reward, visual processing/attention, and memory in both youth non-smokers and smokers. Adolescents also self-reported that seeing e-cigarette ads increased their desire to want to smoke.
We applaud the recent report that the North Carolina Attorney General, Josh Stein, the first state attorney general to hold companies that promote teen vaping accountable (NY Times, May 15, 2019).
We believe that the hundreds of ads on social media platforms are actually harming young teenagers, and are enticing them to buy these products. By seeing the e-cigarette advertisements that show how fun it is to vape, teenagers believe it is safe to vape.
Teen vaping is an epidemic, and for us to make an impact to combat this form of drug abuse, we will need to make significant changes, particularly on social media platforms. Let’s hold companies accountable to curb this epidemic.
