Pro-vaping Instagram influencer posts outnumber FDA’s anti-e-cigarette messages by 10,000 to 1
Instagram influencers appear to be dampening FDA's campaign against vaping. Their promotional vaping Instagram posts outnumber FDA's anti-vaping content 10,000 to 1, suggests a new study.
"Hashtags like #vape, #vapenation, #vapeporn, #ejuice generate thousands of posts per month, while the FDA campaign put up about 50 posts on Instagram. This stark imbalance in the volume of posts has caused the FDA message to be overwhelmed by marketing from vaping influencers," Julia Vassey, a researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment, tells MEA WorldWide (MEAWW).
The study shows that e-cigarette marketing via Instagram influencers has the potential to be a big problem. "I think the findings show us that the promotional vaping content on Instagram continues to grow, which is alarming because youth, including underage, is getting exposed to this content," Vassey added.
What is more, many teenagers think e-cigarettes are less dangerous than conventional cigarettes. "But e-cigarettes can harm the adolescent brain and increase susceptibility to tobacco addiction. Vaping also raises the risk of breathing difficulties, inflammatory responses in the body, while lowering defenses against lung infections and diseases," the authors write in their study.
The popularity of vaping is showing no signs of slowing down. The number of middle and high school students using e-cigarettes rose from 3.6 million in 2018 to 5.4 million in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
To put an end to this epidemic, the FDA introduced a campaign — #TheRealCost anti-vaping campaign — to keep the youth well-informed but it appears to have a limited impact, say the authors of the study.
Vassey and her colleagues carried out this study to gain insights into the role social media plays in shaping the youth's perception toward vaping. They collected 245,894 Instagram posts before and after the #TheRealCost campaign launch. The team interviewed five vaping influencers and eight college-age social media users.
After the campaign launch, the team saw a spike in the number of likes on vaping posts — a threefold increase in the average number of likes on such posts, and a sixfold rise in the number of posts with more than 100 likes.
The team found 70% of the vaping-related images featured e-juices and devices. These products contain higher nicotine concentrations and are often popular among e-cigarette novices, says the study. These posts could have a profound impact on the underage population, as the influencers had vast followers from children aged between 13-17 years.
"Based on the results, the FDA anti-vaping campaign is not very popular and we saw Instagram user comments disputing the FDA claims of damaging health effects from nicotine and calling the campaign propaganda," says Vassey.
Vassey maintains that their study is not trying to criticize the FDA efforts, as they have not comprehensively assessed their campaign. According to social media users, the scare tactics adopted by FDA's anti-vaping campaign are not helping. Considering some alternative approaches for discouraging e-cigarette initiation among young people might help. Instead of using an instructional language, the FDA could perhaps engage with the youth by involving them in designing intervention strategies, she explains.
The study was small, with inputs from a small number of young people in focus groups and vaping influencers. The results of this study were limited to Instagram content, as opposed to other social media outlets, explains Vassey. In the future, the researchers plan to investigate how content drives actual vaping.
The study has been published in Frontiers in Communication.