During the past academic year in high school, I took a course that required me to write a research paper on a topic that I found interesting, relevant to the community, or of current significance. With this in mind, I decided to investigate the topic of e-cigarettes, which has been debated by scientists, congress members, and parents over the last decade.
My study investigated the impact of viewing e-cigarette promotional content on Instagram on teenagers' perceptions of e-cigarettes. I created an online survey and queried the opinions of 142 high school students in South Florida on the subject.
Half of the students looked at electronic cigarette promotions on Instagram before answering the survey, while the other half did not. If my hypothesis were correct, the group that looked at the promotions before answering the questions should have a more positive view of electronic cigarettes than the group that did not. However, after conducting statistical testing, the results did not demonstrate this.
The responses of the two groups regarding their perceptions of electronic cigarettes were almost identical. Therefore, my hypothesis is not supported that watching electronic cigarette promotion on Instagram would affect the views of adolescents in a Florida high school towards electronic cigarettes.
Does the anti-vaping movement aimed at preventing teenagers from using e-cigarette products really work? My research has indeed revealed a finding.
The vast majority of students support the anti-smoking movement, much like in the United States. The FDA has been entirely ineffective in preventing youth e-cigarette use. In fact, only 20% of teenagers report having seen anti-e-cigarette information on social media, while the remaining 80% claim to have only seen promotions or posts of friends using e-cigarettes.
This raises several questions about whether current methods to prevent teenage nicotine addiction are reaching their intended audience. Should organizations such as the FDA stop airing videos that vilify electronic cigarettes in an attempt to discourage teenagers from using them? Are 30-second advertisements aired during children's television programs really attractive to teenagers who are obsessed with social media?
Although promotion activities of e-cigarettes on social media may not have as large of an impact on teenagers as initially thought, research in the field indicates that posts targeting young adults and teenagers with e-cigarette content do have an impact on youth and encourage similar behavior.
Ironically, individual posts about using e-cigarettes, rather than promotional ones, appear to be doing the real promotion. If organizations like the FDA truly want to reduce youth e-cigarette use, they will have to confront this directly.
Furthermore, the FDA may be considering taking legal action. Recently, the FDA rejected the pre-market application of popular e-cigarette company JUUL. This comes as no surprise, considering the FDA had dealt with the company's social media content that was attracting young people in 2018.
Although the JUUL empire may be crumbling, there are still dozens of other e-cigarette companies authorized to sell their products. These e-cigarettes are often passed on to teenagers, who then use social media to influence their friends by posting about them on their favorite platforms.
If the FDA wants to permanently solve this problem, it must not only improve communication with teenagers but also target all e-cigarette companies that first offer products to them, not just JUUL.
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