How E-cigarette Ads Are Harming Canadian Youth

Generation Z, teens are experiencing a new and different way of advertisement. Social media is now being used as a tool for companies to promote their products through social media platforms such as instagram and snapchat. Companies such as Juul and Smok are taking advantage of these new features, but are directing their products at younger generations. Mixing highly addictive substances with social media is the reason we are seeing so many new illnesses arise due to vaping.

Almost every teen we know is addicted to social media and just their phones in general. It's the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning and the last thing we do before going to sleep. All teenagers are constantly being persuaded into buying a product by so many eye catching titles and posted everyday on our discovery pages. These discovery pages are a new feature posted on almost every social media network, created within the last 5 years. It allows companies to advertise their products as well as promote social media influencers. This new tool makes it so effortless for companies to market their products just by the swipe of a finger. They create scandalous and captivating cover photos, as well as clickbait titles in order to draw attention to their brand. I often find myself scrolling through instagram and seeing so many captivating ads pop up. Weather it be a bikini sale or a new jewelry website, I find it very intriguing and often leads me into clicking the link to their website, and then contemplating purchasing this item. New e-cigarette companies have started using these same tactics in order to draw in more customers to their products. But the problem is they are attracting the wrong crowd.

Canada’s youth as well as myself are at a very vulnerable state in our lives, where we can be persuaded into purchasing just about anything. These tiny e-cigarette devices can create huge clouds, and be used almost anywhere. However, no one really knows the harm it can cause, especially on teenagrers. The most common ingredient we all hear of is nicotine, which we all know is a highly addictive substance found in cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco. We also all know that most vaporizers contain many different flavoured juices to give a new and exciting sensation to a vaping device. But what we did not know was that these chemicals put in these juices are linked to many unknown lung diseases. Now take a new unresearched product that contains highly addictive substances and pair it with a teens reliance on social media. We have just found ourselves a route to disaster. So many of us teens are being manipulated by these companies into purchasing a product we know nothing about.

Although we all know the legal age requirement to purchase any vaporized or nicotine products is 19 in Ontario, we have seen so many stories revealed within the past six months, of so many underaged kids ending up in the hospital on life support, due to the unknown illnesses linked to vaping. According to Health Canada the top reason teens started vaping is seeing their friends do it, but social media influences played a role as well. 15 percent of students in grades 10 to 12 have used a vaping product within the last 30 days, recorded in 2016-17, which was up by 9 percent from the year prior. Earlier this year the Canaidian government announced they wanted to minimize the physical visibility of vape aimed towards young people.

But how can this have an effective result in stopping illnesses linked to Canada's youth if we are still able to access these promotions and ads through social media? It is not the exposure to these products being shown on the streets, it is the constant promotional ads flooding through so many young people's social media websites. It's like asking a smoker to quit smokers but then showing them a pack of cigarettes everyday.