Characterizing e-Cigarette–Related Videos on TikTok: Observational Study

BACKGROUND: As a popular social networking platform for sharing short videos, TikTok has been widely used for sharing e-cigarettes or vaping-related videos, especially among the youth. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to characterize e-cigarette or vaping-related videos and their user engagement on TikTok through descriptive analysis. METHODS: From TikTok, a total of 417 short videos, posted between October 4, 2018, and February 27, 2021, were collected using e-cigarette or vaping-related hashtags. Two human coders independently hand-coded the video category and the attitude toward vaping (provaping or antivaping) for each vaping-related video. The social media user engagement measures (eg, the comment count, like count, and share count) for each video category were compared within provaping and antivaping groups. The user accounts posting these videos were also characterized. RESULTS: Among 417 vaping-related TikTok videos, 387 (92.8%) were provaping, and 30 (7.2%) were antivaping videos. Among provaping TikTok videos, the most popular category is vaping tricks (n=107, 27.65%), followed by advertisement (n=85, 21.95%), customization (n=75, 19.38%), TikTok trend (n=70, 18.09%), others (n=44, 11.37%), and education (n=6, 1.55%). By comparison, videos showing the TikTok trend had significantly higher user engagement (like count per video) than other provaping videos. Antivaping videos included 15 (50%) videos with the TikTok trend, 10 (33.33%) videos on education, and 5 (16.67%) videos about others. Videos with education have a significantly lower number of likes than other antivaping videos. Most TikTok users posting vaping-related videos are personal accounts (119/203, 58.62%). CONCLUSIONS: Vaping-related TikTok videos are dominated by provaping videos focusing on vaping tricks, advertisement, customization, and TikTok trend. Videos with the TikTok trend have higher user engagement than other video categories. Our findings provide important information on vaping-related videos shared on TikTok and their user engagement levels, which might provide valuable guidance on future policy making, such as possible restrictions on provaping videos posted on TikTok, as well as how to effectively communicate with the public about the potential health risks of vaping.