The more time spent on social media, the greater the likelihood that children and young people will both smoke and/or vape, suggests research published online in the respiratory journal Thorax. Clocking up a weekday tally of 7 or more hours was associated with a more than a doubling in risk among 10 to 25 year olds, the findings indicate, reinforcing concerns about the marketing clout of these platforms, say the researchers. The existing body of research on social media use and smoking and vaping mostly concerns the USA, so to better assess the situation in the UK, the researchers drew on data from 10 to 25 year olds taking part in the UK Household Longitudinal Study 2015-21.
Participants were asked to report their normal weekday social media use as well as current cigarette smoking and vaping activity. Among 10,808 participants with a total of 27,962 reported observations, just over 8.5% reported current cigarette smoking in at least one survey, and 2.
5% reported current vaping. Just over 1% reported dual use. Analysis of the responses showed that cigarette smoking, vaping, and dual-use were all more common among participants reporting heavier social media use.
Just 2% of those who said they didn't use social media reported current cigarette smoking compared with nearly 16% of those who said they spent 7 or more hours/weekday on it. Similarly, current vaping ranged from less than 1% among non-users of social media to 2.5% among those spending 7 or more hours on it every week.
