The Effects of Alternative Tobacco Product Marketing on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok on Tobacco Use among Youth and Young Adults - Enter the text here that is the new abstract information for your application. This section must be no longer than 30 lines of text. While digital marketing of tobacco products is increasingly common, the role of social media in tobacco control is still understudied. There is a growing body of research suggesting that social media promotion of non-cigarette or “alternative” tobacco products (e.g., e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, newer nicotine pouch products) is rapidly growing. These messages are currently under-regulated, target youth and vulnerable populations and feature branded merchandise, celebrity or “influencer” promotion, incentivized user engagement enhancing “virality” and dissemination of content. Youth use social media at higher rates than the general population in the U.S., which potentially multiplies the effect of targeted social media marketing. The existing regulatory imbalances in treatment of alternative tobacco products (ATPs) and digital marketing may explain persistent differences in tobacco use and in marketing exposure among U.S. population subgroups. In particular, the recent exponential rise in social media advertising coincided with significant increases in ATP use among U.S. youth, as well as emergence of newer nicotine products (e.g., synthetic nicotine), which has undermined recent progress in reducing overall tobacco product use among youth. Understanding the impact of exposure to social media content can inform tobacco control policy and practice, as these messages reflect population norms, targeted marketing, and other previously unmeasured contextual factors associated with health outcomes. Unfortunately, to date, no studies have examined the impact of social media marketing of such ATPs as hookah, heated tobacco, and other emerging ATPs. This project will advance the scientific knowledge on ATPs by filling this critical research gap. The overarching goal of this project is to examine the effects of exposure to ATP-related social media content and provide timely scientific basis for regulatory actions on restricting marketing of these products. The specific aims of the proposed project are: to identify and characterize potentially regulatable social media message content related to alternative tobacco products by source, major themes (e.g., new user targeting, health risks, viral marketing strategies), and region (Aim 1); to assess the impact of potential exposure to ATP social media content on ATP use, initiation, and related outcomes and examine how the relationship between exposure and ATP use differs across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups (Aim 2); to study whether/to what extent tobacco control policies modify the impact of exposure to social media content (Aim 3). These aims will be accomplished by applying innovative research and analytic methods to a unique combination of data sets, including social media data from Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, Google Maps, Google Search, and survey data on tobacco-related outcomes. Findings will provide highly policy-relevant scientific evidence on the impact of social media marketing of ATPs. This project will offer unique insight into the influence of digital ATP promotion on individual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and build a scientific and methodological base for surveillance and regulation of marketing messages on social media platforms.
