Youth, Tobacco, and the Internet

When we first started thinking about the problem of tobacco and young people using the internet, we thought the main issue was going to be online purchasing of tobacco products: cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars, etc. This may turn out to be an abiding problem, but the fact that UPS, DHL, and FedEx have voluntarily adopted policies to only deliver tobacco products to recipients with a state license to buy them has probably shifted the bulk of the problem elsewhere. And we think that that elsewhere is into tobacco marketing. Marketing traditionally has meant advertisement and product placement in our brick and mortar community: in and on store fronts, billboards and radio, magazines and T-shirts, for example. The tobacco industry settled a lawsuit with 46 states in 1998 and one of the terms of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) is that the tobacco cartel discontinues marketing designed to appeal to youth. But with the advent of the worldwide web, tobacco promotion has taken on new dimensions.

In an article published in 2007 in the British Medical Journal Tobacco Control, researchers examined the prevalence of tobacco messaging on YouTube. Freeman and Chapman introduce their paper with remarks relevant to our discussion of youth, tobacco, and the internet.

With advertising bans eroding direct tobacco advertising and promotional opportunities, tobacco companies are embracing more covert means of keeping their products in the minds of current and potential consumers. Compared with the breadth of published research on "above-the-line" tobacco advertising, research examining "below-the-line" indirect forms of tobacco promotion is in its infancy. Promotions at dance parties, themed nights in hip clubs, bars and music festivals, and disguising market research as sampling promotions are examples of identified strategies. Just as tobacco company marketers have infiltrated youth-friendly venues, it is conceivable that they also have a presence on youth-friendly websites. While the world wide web (WWW) is being used extensively to sell cigarettes, its largely unregulated status holds much potential as a vehicle for both promoting smoking and particular brands of tobacco products, and for promoting antismoking discourse.

The WWW is no longer a vehicle to simply retrieve information and purchase goods; it is now a fully interactive and participatory platform. Coined in 2004 as Web 2.0, the WWW is increasingly being driven by consumer-generated content. It is both timely and critical to examine tobacco marketing in the Web 2.0 era. We are particularly interested in websites that appeal to youth and young adults, the same target population for tobacco companies. Internet use by young people is part of their everyday life… http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/16/3/207

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 93% of American youth aged 12-17 are active on line. Over two-thirds of parents (68%) say they have rules about the kinds of internet sites their teenaged children can or cannot visit, as well as rules about what kinds of information their children can share with people they talk to on the internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teen_Parents_data_memo_Oct2007.pdf

Below are some sample guidelines and additional resources for parents and children of all ages to help navigate the internet safely. We have also pulled some online forum threads (contact info altered) to highlight the sorts of topics and offers that youth are able to access and should be given tobacco prevention training to recognize and reject. Please contact us to request these threads. Also, please let us know if this information is helpful or how we can make this site more useful for you and your whole family.