A recent study from Yale has investigated the phenomenon of ‘vape tricks’ on YouTube and its affect on encouraging teens to start vaping.
The report found that, behind fruity and novelty flavours, young people were reporting that the desire to learn and replicate vape tricks they saw on YouTube as a major impact on their buying decision. The study took a broad look at the popular vape tricks and set out to discover why they were so appealing to young people.
The videos were found to have over 80 being of men vaping and with half of those men being white. It also found that almost half of all vape trick videos were produced directly by vaping influencers or brands.
One researcher pointed out that they can’t know if the private accounts aren’t secretly being paid by vaping brands anyway.
Vaping, especially in the US, has been described as a new epidemic addicting teenager to nicotine. The news is disheartening for many who remember teen smoking being at record lows during the 2010s.
A 2015 survey found that many teenagers reported vaping tricks as their motivation for starting vaping. This also connected with a different study that said vape tricks were leading teenagers to start vaping where they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Researchers even admitted that the tricks kids are coming up with are “pretty cool” and it “it’s pretty amazing what you can do with vape tricks,” and that the culture around it is what keeps being vaping for a long time.
Jumping into this culture is apparently very easy, as a Google or YouTube search for vaping from a blank account will return vaping tricks as top results. It is yet to be seen what responsibility YouTube may have in cracking down on videos that may be encouraging nicotine use in teenagers.
Dan Jones was born and raised in Australia. Dan covers stories related to vaping at Kev’s Vape.
