Social media trial tests parental strategies against teen vaping

A University of Oklahoma study will test whether targeted social media messages can help parents identify vaping products, understand nicotine and cannabis risks, and take action to prevent adolescent use. The five-year project, supported by a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, will begin by examining what parents and adolescents know about vaping. Rather than assume that greater knowledge automatically changes behavior, the researchers will measure whether parental understanding is associated with preventive practices such as setting rules, monitoring adolescents, and discussing vaping. They will also assess whether those practices are associated with lower rates of vaping among teens.

The study will enroll 1,000 parent-adolescent pairs. Initial surveys will evaluate parental knowledge, including whether parents know whether their children have vaped and whether they understand that vaping devices may contain nicotine or cannabis. This gap is important because many products resemble ordinary items such as highlighters or lip gloss, and rapidly changing device designs can make use harder to detect. Investigators will then consider whether parents with greater knowledge are more likely to communicate with their children, monitor their behavior, establish household rules, and otherwise participate in prevention. An association between these behaviors and lower adolescent vaping would not by itself establish that parenting practices caused the difference, so the project will treat those relationships as evidence to examine rather than proven effects.

To test whether information can improve parents’ knowledge and behavior, researchers will select about 300 participants who show relatively low levels of vaping knowledge for a five-week online experiment. These parents will view Facebook messages addressing vaping devices, health risks, adolescent vaping, and marketing directed toward young people. The research team is working with the national organization Parents Against Vaping to develop the content. The experiment will test whether exposure to the messages increases parents’ knowledge, encourages greater use of prevention strategies, and is associated with changes in vaping among their children. Because the study is a planned online experiment and grant-supported investigation, the release does not report evidence that the messages are already effective.

The researchers chose social media because it offers a way to deliver information to a large audience at comparatively low cost. Researchers cited data indicating that nearly 90% of parents use social media, primarily Facebook, and that many turn to it for parenting advice and support. The broader goal is to determine whether such an approach could support future campaigns conducted with public health organizations. The study is led by Katelyn Romm, Ph.D., and Erin Vogel, Ph.D., members of the TSET Health Promotion Research Center at OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center and assistant professors of pediatrics in the OU College of Medicine. Amy Cohn, Ph.D., a center member and professor of pediatrics, will serve as co-investigator. Funding is provided through the National Institute on Drug Abuse under award R01DA065710-01, with additional support from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

The need for better parental awareness comes amid a changing youth-vaping landscape. The release states that nicotine vaping among young people has declined from its peak in 2019–2020, but adolescents who continue to vape report more frequent use. More than one-third of those who vape nicotine also report vaping cannabis or THC, which carries additional risks. Vaping is associated with lung problems from substances not safe to inhale, increased blood pressure and heart rate, susceptibility to addiction, and a greater likelihood of using other tobacco products, including cigarettes. These established associations provide the risk information the social media materials are intended to communicate; the proposed trial will determine whether parents learn from, respond to, and act on that information. Ultimately, the project will assess whether a scalable digital intervention could give parents clearer knowledge and more confidence for conversations with adolescents, although its effectiveness, causal impact on youth behavior, and usefulness in a national campaign remain questions for the planned research.

Subject of Research: A clinical-behavioral study of social media messaging to support parental prevention of adolescent nicotine and cannabis vaping.

Article Title: Study aims to empower parents to prevent teen vaping

Article References: Study aims to empower parents to prevent teen vaping. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

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Keywords: adolescent vaping, nicotine, cannabis, parental supervision, social media intervention, Facebook experiment, youth prevention, health communication, aims, empower, parents, prevent