Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: May 24, 2021
Date Accepted: Sep 6, 2021
#vaping on TikTok- Implications for Informed Decision Making by Adolescents: Descriptive Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite the public health importance of vaping and the widespread use of TikTok by adolescents and young adults, research is lacking on the nature and scope of vaping content on TikTok.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to describe the content of TikTok videos related to vaping.
Methods:
By searching the hashtag #vaping, 100 relevant videos under that hashtag were coded for several categories related to vaping and additional categories included number of likes, comments, views, and if the video involved music, humor, and/or dance.
Results:
The 100 videos included in the sample garnered 156,331,347 views, 20,335,800 likes, and 296,460 comments. The only content categories observed in the majority of the videos sampled was promote vaping, which was included in 57 videos that garnered over 74 million views (47.5% of cumulative views). A total of 42% of the videos featured someone vaping or in the presence of vape pens, and these videos garnered over 22% of the total views (>35 million).
Conclusions:
It is necessary for public health agencies to improve understanding about the nature and content of videos that attract viewers’ attention, and harness the strength of this communication channel to promote informed decision making about vaping.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.