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Youth smoking remains a significant public health problem in the U.S. and in Virginia. Hong Xue, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy, is conducting a study of youth smoking and prevention on the effects of policy and prevention strategies on the use of conventional and e-cigarettes in Virginia adolescents.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Associate Professor Hong Xue and Professors Alison Cuellar and Lawrence Cheskin and colleagues at Â鶹ÊÓƵ's College of Health and Human Services examined associations between the amount of time spent on specific social media sites and the use of both e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes.  

While most of the social media platforms reviewed in the study showed no significant association with vaping, Xue and his colleagues did find that college-age e-cigarette users who spent more time on Snapchat did have a higher prevalence of lifetime e-cigarette use as well as an increased frequency of e-cigarette use in the past 30 days.

College-age e-cigarette users who are occasional or regular vapers spend an average of just over two hours a day on Snapchat, according to the study. Non-users, on the other hand, spend less than an hour each day on the app. The study also found that each extra hour on Snapchat was associated with a 4.61 percent increase in likelihood of lifetime e-cigarette use