Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study

Abstract

Aim: There are concerns regarding what young people are exposed to on TikTok due to trending content promoting e-cigarette use through humour, marketing and lifestyle acceptability. Using baseline data from November 2020, we aimed to examine how much content from a sample of popular vaping videos remained accessible at 9- and 12-month follow-ups. We aimed to monitor changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) before and after the U.S. Congressional Hearing on youth protection measures on social media in October 2021. Methods: Hashtag-based keywords were used to collect the most viewed publicly available e-cigarette related videos on TikTok (N = 802) from inception to November 2020 to form a baseline. Researchers conducted a longitudinal descriptive study using this data, with 9- and 12-month follow-ups to measure changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) and content availability. Findings: Of the 802 videos from the baseline, 562 remained at the 9-month follow-up and 511 remained at the 12-month follow-up. At the 12-month follow-up, the majority of vaping-related hashtags were removed by TikTok after the Congressional Hearing. Between the baseline and 9-month follow up, views increased by 1.4% and likes increased by 4.4%. At 12-month follow-up, views had increased by 1.7% and likes by 4.2% compared to baseline data. Whilst 291 videos were no longer publicly accessible at 12-month follow-up, 39 of these were made inaccessible by the content creators. The most viewed and most liked vaping videos at baseline were still publicly available. Conclusions: Whilst the depiction type and thematic distribution of removed videos suggest that TikTok may be removing a small proportion of content that promotes the use of e-cigarettes, metadata of remaining videos indicate an increase in viewer engagement. TikTok’s removal of explicit substance-related hashtags from the platform could be a step towards preventing adolescents from being exposed to harmful behaviours and substances online. However, the platform should consider enforcing effective age restrictions on content that promotes substance use in a positive light.

Assessing the Quality of Hearing Aids-Related Videos on TikTok

“…Compared with other online sources, short video applications can offer rich technology features and useful social media affordances to users, such as beauty and makeup, education, cooking, wellness and technology, and educational healthcare content has become an important part of TikTok's content ecosystem ( 8 ). The world's most popular short video app, TikTok, and its Chinese version reached first place on the global mobile app download list, with one billion active monthly users ( 8 , 9 ). In TikTok, short videos can attract users through salient and engaging contents and images, and stimulate users' buying desire.…”

Themes in TikTok Videos Featuring Little Cigars and Cigarillos: Content Analysis

“…The removal of posts that violate the platform’s community guidelines is essential for protecting youth from exposure to harmful posts, including tobacco-related posts. This is accomplished through the flagging of suspected violations by content moderators [ 28 ]. In this study, 22.8% (358/1570) of the original posts collected during the study period were removed by TikTok, which indicates that its community guidelines are enforced to a degree.…”

“…To understand why such posts were inaccessible, the coders documented the apparent reason a post was no longer publicly available. These posts could have been taken down by TikTok’s content moderators, as indicated by the message “Video currently unavailable.” If the video was directly removed by TikTok, it was an indication that the platform was enforcing its community guidelines prohibiting tobacco-related content [ 28 ]. Posts could also have been made unavailable by the content creator due to changes in privacy settings, as indicated by the message “The account is private.” These posts were not included in the analytic sample.…”

Frequency of social media use and exposure to tobacco or nicotine-related content in association with E-cigarette use among youth: A cross-sectional and longitudinal survey analysis

“…Social media platforms, including those that are popular among adolescents – e.g., Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat ( Rodriguez, 2021 , Social networks used by teens in U.S. Statista, 2022 ) - restrict depiction and advertising of tobacco-related content (“ Advertiser, 2022 , Branded, 2020 , TikTok and Instagram, 2022 ). However, such bans are difficult to enforce, and user-generated and promotional e-cigarette-related posts are still present on these platforms ( Laestadius et al, 2019 , Rutherford et al, 2022 ). Promotional posts are often created by influencers ( Vassey et al, 2022 , Vassey et al, 2021 ) - e.g., models, bloggers, or brand ambassadors who post about e-cigarettes on social media on behalf of tobacco brands and tend to glamorize e-cigarette products ( Vassey et al, 2020 ).…”