Characteristics Associated with Young Adults' Intentions to Engage with Anti-Vaping Instagram Posts
Liu, Jessica ; Lee, Donghee N ; Stevens, Elise M
Student Authors
Faculty Advisor
Academic Program
UMass Chan Affiliations
Document Type
Publication Date
Subject Area
Embargo Expiration Date
Link to Full Text
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify behavioral and sociodemographic factors associated with intentions to engage with anti-vaping Instagram posts among a young adult population. This study proposes the following research questions: (1) Does e-cigarette use status influence intentions to engage with anti-vaping Instagram posts?, and (2) How are e-cigarette use and social media use associated? We recruited a convenience sample of young adults (N = 459; aged 18-30 years) in July of 2022 into an online experimental study from Prolific. Participants saw five image-based Instagram posts about the health harms of using e-cigarettes. Participants were then asked about their intentions to engage ("Comment on", "Reshare", "DM/Send this to a friend", "Like", and/or "Take a screenshot of") with the posts. We used logistic regression to run adjusted models for each engagement outcome, which included fixed effects for sociodemographics, tobacco use, and social media/internet use. For the sum of the engagement outcome, we used Poisson regression. Total number of social media sites used was associated with intentions to "Like" the posts ( = 0.025) and the overall engagement score ( = 0.019), respectively. Daily internet use was associated with intentions to "Comment on" ( = 0.016) and "Like" ( = 0.019) the posts. Young adults who reported past 30-day e-cigarette use had higher odds of using Twitter ( = 0.013) and TikTok ( < 0.001), and a higher total number of social media sites used ( = 0.046), compared to young adults who reported never use e-cigarettes. The initial evidence from our exploratory research using a convenience sample suggests that social media campaigns about the harms of e-cigarette use may be an effective way to engage younger audiences, a generation that frequents social media. Efforts to disseminate social media campaigns should consider launching on multiple platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, and consider e-cigarette use status when posting.
Source
Liu J, Lee DN, Stevens EM. Characteristics Associated with Young Adults' Intentions to Engage with Anti-Vaping Instagram Posts. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jun 5;20(11):6054. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20116054. PMID: 37297658; PMCID: PMC10252522.