Association of time spent on social media with youth cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use in the UK: a national longitudinal study

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

May 16, 2024

Summary:

Background: Social media may influence children and young people’s health behaviour, including cigarette and e-cigarette use.

Methods: We analysed data from participants aged 10–25 years in the UK Household Longitudinal Study 2015–2021. The amount of social media use reported on a normal weekday was related to current cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use. Generalised estimating equation (GEE) logistic regression models investigated associations of social media use with cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use. Models controlled for possible confounders including age, sex, country of UK, ethnicity, household income and use of cigarette/e-cigarettes by others within the home.

Results: Among 10 808 participants with 27 962 observations, current cigarette smoking was reported by 8.6% of participants for at least one time point, and current e-cigarette use by 2.5% of participants. In adjusted GEE models, more frequent use of social media was associated with greater odds of current cigarette smoking. This was particularly apparent at higher levels of use (eg, adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 3.60, 95% CI 2.61 to 4.96 for ≥7 hours/day vs none). Associations were similar for e-cigarettes (AOR 2.73, 95% CI 1.40 to 5.29 for ≥7 hours/day social media use vs none). There was evidence of dose–response in associations between time spent on social media and both cigarette and e-cigarette use (both p<0.001). Analyses stratified by sex and household income found similar associations for cigarettes; however, for e-cigarettes associations were concentrated among males and those from higher household income groups.

Conclusions: Social media use is associated with increased risk of cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use. There is a need for greater research on this issue as well as potential policy responses.

Published in

Thorax

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax-2023-220569

ISSN

406376

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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