The vaping problem among teens is growing globally.
Schools in the UK are reporting an increase in students who need medical attention. This includes cases where students needed medical assistance because they vaped in class. Researchers in the Netherlands have discovered that teenagers vape at night, which is a sign of nicotine dependence among adolescents.
In New Zealand, an image widely circulated of a teen’s blackened and shrivelled lungs after 3 years of vaping has renewed concerns about the speed of harm.
These stories demonstrate how vaping has strayed from its original purpose. It was introduced as a safer substitute to smoking, but now it’s embedded in young culture and driven by social influences just as much as nicotine.
E-cigarettes are now a popular lifestyle accessory. They’re sleek, flavoured, and perceived as safe. Behind the clouds of “strawberry-ice” and “blueberry-burst” vapour is a powerful lesson on how misinformation can shape behaviour, less on chemistry and more on psychology.
To understand why vaping is appealing, safe and hard to stop, we need to look at not only the device, but also how our brains process risk, reward, and social cues.
Psychological studies show that people rarely interpret health information nuanced. When faced with complex or unreliable evidence, including new research on vaping and other emerging topics, our brains simplify it into simple categories such as safe or not.
This mental shortcut allows us to make decisions quickly without having to examine every detail. Many people take the statement vaping as meaning that it is safer than smoking cigarettes because judging relative risks can be difficult. Vaping devices with bright colours, flavours that are sweet and wellness marketing reinforce the idea that vaping is safe or good, even if there is no long-term research.
This simplifies the spread of misinformation. People are less likely than before to challenge a behavior or look for contradictory evidence. Because we tend to categorise things, complex health messages can be distorted by marketing and social cues.
Social influence amplifies this effect. Vaping becomes socially acceptable and desirable when friends, peers, and influencers share vaping content on the internet. Social proof encourages people to experiment and reinforces that quitting vaping would mean they’d lose their identity, belonging or enjoyment.
Social media platforms amplify these cues by circulating anecdotes and trends. In England, 1 million vapers are under the impression that they’re safe.
The popularity of vaping was not just due to misinformation, but also because the brain gave people reasons to believe it was safe. Loss Aversion is a factor that explains this.
Vaping can seem harmless at first, but the risks of long-term vaping are not immediately apparent. Vaping is not only a habit that people continue to use because they are unaware of the risks, but also because it feels like they’re giving up something important.
Together, these forces form a self-reinforcing circle. Binary thinking reduces the risk of failure, social proof increases desire and loss aversion can make quitting seem costly. Misinformation is not only misleading. It changes the way people think and turns a tool for harm reduction into a hard to break habit.
The growth of vaping is revealing a deeper problem in the way health information is spread. In the digital age public perception changes faster than scientific consensus. Young people are especially susceptible to online trends and anecdotes, which often overtake the careful, slow process of research.
Once misinformation has taken hold, it can be difficult to reverse. UK secondary students vape in one out of ten cases, despite the NHS warning that the long-term effects are uncertain.
To reverse the trend, people must change their perceptions of what they can gain from vaping. Media literacy can help people identify when relatable content comes from advertising, or when trends have been engineered.
Social media is a great way to reach people with short, engaging messages. Influencers and peers can change perceptions when they highlight the true costs of vaping. These include money, energy, and lung capacity. They also expose the marketing that is behind the appeal. This appeals to loss aversion, making vaping seem like a bigger loss.
Media literacy combined with well-targeted, relatable content can help change vaping perceptions. It can also make psychological biases in favour of health, and encourage people to resist misleading narratives.
In order to address the vaping explosion, it is important to understand the social and mental environments of the people who are affected by the trend, as well as the science behind these devices.
Andy Levy has not disclosed any relevant affiliations other than their academic appointment. He does not work, consult, own or receive funding from companies or organisations that would benefit from the article.
