A study published online in the "Tobacco Control" magazine found that on the video sharing platform tiktok, people can get positive descriptions of e-cigarettes and e-cigarettes for free, without any age limit, and have been viewed many times.

The researchers urged that, given that the platform is very popular among people of this age group, stricter regulations are needed to limit the potential exposure of young people to these videos.

Research shows that the proportion of high school students in the United States who used e-cigarettes last month increased from about 9% in 2014 to more than 27% in 2019, a three-fold increase. New evidence suggests that e-cigarettes may damage the developing brain, lungs and heart.

According to researchers, Douyin is the fastest growing platform in the world, attracting 800 million users every month. They spend an average of 52 minutes on Douyin and watch more than 200 videos every day. In the United States, one-third of users are under the age of 14.

TikTok’s community guidelines restrict the upload of videos that “describe, promote, or trade drugs or other controlled substances”. In addition, the platform also prohibits the broadcasting of tobacco and alcohol advertisements.

Considering that TikTok is becoming more and more popular among teenagers, researchers want to see how e-cigarettes and e-cigarette videos are presented on the platform.

They identified the most popular e-cigarette tags based on the number of views on a certain day in November 2020: “#vape”, “#vapetricks”, “#JUULgang”, “#PUFbar”, “#nicotine”, “#vapenation” , "#Vaping", "#vapeshop" and "#vapelife".

They collected public URL links of the most popular e-cigarette-related videos (1000) from TikTok (the earliest upload date is January 2019) to November 2020.

Clicks, likes, user categories and topics are all independently evaluated. After removing duplicate videos and videos unrelated to e-cigarettes (albeit with tags), the final sample contains 808 videos.

In total, these videos have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, with an average of 1 million views (range 112,900-78,600,000), and an average number of "likes" of 143,000 (range 10,000-1,000,000).

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the videos describe the use of e-cigarettes positively, and these videos have been viewed more than 1.1 billion times. Neutral descriptions about e-cigarette use were viewed a total of 290 million times (24%), and negative descriptions were viewed a total of 193 million times (13%).

Seven main themes appeared: "Comedies and jokes" (52%; 618 million views in total), "Lifestyle and acceptance" (35%; 459 million views), "Marketing" (29%; 392 million views) ), "E-cigarette trick" (20%; 487 million views), "Nicotine and addiction" (20%; 194 million views), "creativity" or how to tutorials (16%; 322 million views) Volume) and “warning” (11%; 131 million views). Videos classified as "comedies and jokes" are the most common (421/808; 52%), followed by "lifestyle and acceptability" (282/808; 35%), "marketing" (230/808; 28.5%), "vaping tricks" (160/808; 20%), "Nicotine and addiction" (159/808; 20%), "Creativity and skills" (130/808; 16%) ) And'warning' (86/808; 10%).

The people in the video are believed to be 71% male and 26% under 18 years old. This is an observational study, so causality cannot be established. The researchers admitted that their samples did not capture videos that used emojis or did not use tags. These findings also cannot determine the results of exposure to e-cigarettes.

But they pointed out that “experimental and longitudinal data show that seeing other young people, friends, acquaintances, or influential people smoking e-cigarettes in a fun and entertaining environment may normalize the use of e-cigarettes and make them Become an act of emulation.

They concluded: "Previous research has shown that young people’s exposure to e-cigarettes is related to e-cigarette use. Considering that e-cigarette-related videos are easy to see on TikTok, there is an urgent need to consider age restrictions to reduce viewing by young people. .

Prev : E-cigarettes help quit smoking

Next : Electronic cigarette packaging

Email:sales@mlifevapor.com

WhatsApp:+86 13871529372

Email:sales@mlifevapor.com

WhatsApp:+86 13871529372

Tel：+86 13871529372

Add：6 / F, block B, building 2, Fuyong Tongtai times center, Bao'an District, Shenzhen

Language：简体中文 | >

Tel：+86 13871529372

Add：6 / F, block B, building 2, Fuyong Tongtai times center, Bao'an District, Shenzhen Website