• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Thursday, October 2, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

How vaping companies are use Instagram to market to young people

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
July 9, 2020
in Health
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Researchers use artificial intelligence to analyse hundreds of thousands of Instagram posts about vaping

IMAGE

Credit: Aqdas Malik, Aalto University

E-cigarettes are highly addictive nicotine products with unclear health impacts, particularly on young people. Instagram is a visual social media platform which is wildly popular, particularly with young people. Researchers interested in public health at Aalto university in Finland studied how vaping is represented on the platform. By using artificial intelligence, they were able to analyse hundreds of thousands of posts from a 6-month period last year, and found that a large portion of posts are promoting controversial flavoured e-liquids to young audiences.

The research worked by downloading every image on Instagram that had a caption including “#vaping” on the network for June to November 2019. ‘We knew this would be predominantly promotional material,’ said Dr Aqdas Malik from the department of computer science who studies public health and the internet, ‘but we were interested in what types of images these would be, and who was posting them.’ In the end, they generated a database of over half a million pictures, which they then sorted using a neural network, which grouped the images into categories of pictures with similar features.

What the neural network showed was that 40% of the images – the largest proportion out of the 6 categories – were of vaping e-liquids. These were predominantly posted by Instagram profiles listed as business accounts. The prominence of posts about e-liquids is interesting from a public health perspective because, although many e-cigarette brands market themselves as “smoking cessation” devices, it has been shown by other studies that flavoured liquids are strongly linked to adolescent users taking up vaping in the first place. The USA banned the sale of flavoured liquids at the beginning of this year specifically to help tackle the huge growth of teenage vaping, and other countries are looking to do the same.

‘While print and broadcast media has clear rules and regulations about what can and cannot be advertised, and what constitutes advertising, we don’t see this on social media,’ said Dr Malik. ‘I think we need stricter laws and rules on how we allow these products to be seen on these networks. Any 12-year-old with a phone can get an account and bypass the age-rules for seeing what’s posted here, and the potential health implications are significant.’ 60% of all the posts using the #vaping hashtag were from business accounts. Over 70% of Instagram users are under 35, and over 35% of its users are under 24 years old. ‘It’s a huge grey area in terms of advertising regulations, especially regarding promotion towards younger audiences’ Dr Malik said.

###

The research has been published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics, and is available to read online open access for free here.

Media Contact
Aqdas Malik
[email protected]

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104223

Tags: AddictionAdvertising/Public RelationsComputer ScienceMedicine/HealthPublic HealthSmoking/TobaccoSocial/Behavioral ScienceTechnology/Engineering/Computer Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Exploring Disordered Eating and Identity in Students

October 2, 2025

Sudden Death Post-Aortic Valve Replacement Reveals Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

October 2, 2025

Exploring ICU Nurses’ CRRT Downtime Management Insights

October 2, 2025

New Paradigm in Bacteroidota Protein Biogenesis

October 2, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    90 shares
    Share 36 Tweet 23
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    74 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17
  • How Donor Human Milk Storage Impacts Gut Health in Preemies

    64 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Exploring Disordered Eating and Identity in Students

Cysteine Boosts Gut Stem Cells via IL-22

Sudden Death Post-Aortic Valve Replacement Reveals Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Success! An email was just sent to confirm your subscription. Please find the email now and click 'Confirm' to start subscribing.

Join 60 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.