The increasing use of social media and alternative nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and snus, poses new threats to successful tobacco control. Previous research shows how smoking spreads through social networks, while it remains unclear how alternative nicotine products and online interactions are changing the patterns of spread. In order to design effective policies, we must understand the mechanisms in social networks that are crucial for nicotine use. Since it is typically teenagers who start smoking, efforts targeting this group are now needed to address these new tobacco challenges.
Our project will be the first to identify the factors behind the spread of different nicotine products in social networks and then develop an action plan to address these. We will be able to show:
- How different nicotine products spread among youth and whether these products are normalizing cigarette smoking,
- How cigarette smoking spreads both online and offline,
- Evaluate the potential consequences of network-based interventions for various nicotine products and online interactions.
We will collect social network data from 1,000 teenagers in Swedish school classes in two rounds, including information about social networks both online and offline, nicotine use, and link the collected data to Swedish registers.
