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Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study

Aim: There are concerns regarding what young people are exposed to on TikTok due to trending content promoting e-cigarette use through humour, marketing and lifestyle acceptability. Using baseline data from November 2020, we aimed to examine how much content from a sample of popular vaping videos re...

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Autores principales: Rutherford, Brienna N., Sun, Tianze, Lim, Carmen C. W., Chung, Jack, Cheng, Brandon, Davidson, Lily, Tisdale, Calvert, Leung, Janni, Stjepanović, Daniel, Connor, Jason P., Chan, Gary C. K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8834819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35162170
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031141
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author Rutherford, Brienna N.
Sun, Tianze
Lim, Carmen C. W.
Chung, Jack
Cheng, Brandon
Davidson, Lily
Tisdale, Calvert
Leung, Janni
Stjepanović, Daniel
Connor, Jason P.
Chan, Gary C. K.
author_facet Rutherford, Brienna N.
Sun, Tianze
Lim, Carmen C. W.
Chung, Jack
Cheng, Brandon
Davidson, Lily
Tisdale, Calvert
Leung, Janni
Stjepanović, Daniel
Connor, Jason P.
Chan, Gary C. K.
author_sort Rutherford, Brienna N.
collection PubMed
description Aim: There are concerns regarding what young people are exposed to on TikTok due to trending content promoting e-cigarette use through humour, marketing and lifestyle acceptability. Using baseline data from November 2020, we aimed to examine how much content from a sample of popular vaping videos remained accessible at 9- and 12-month follow-ups. We aimed to monitor changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) before and after the U.S. Congressional Hearing on youth protection measures on social media in October 2021. Methods: Hashtag-based keywords were used to collect the most viewed publicly available e-cigarette related videos on TikTok (N = 802) from inception to November 2020 to form a baseline. Researchers conducted a longitudinal descriptive study using this data, with 9- and 12-month follow-ups to measure changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) and content availability. Findings: Of the 802 videos from the baseline, 562 remained at the 9-month follow-up and 511 remained at the 12-month follow-up. At the 12-month follow-up, the majority of vaping-related hashtags were removed by TikTok after the Congressional Hearing. Between the baseline and 9-month follow up, views increased by 1.4% and likes increased by 4.4%. At 12-month follow-up, views had increased by 1.7% and likes by 4.2% compared to baseline data. Whilst 291 videos were no longer publicly accessible at 12-month follow-up, 39 of these were made inaccessible by the content creators. The most viewed and most liked vaping videos at baseline were still publicly available. Conclusions: Whilst the depiction type and thematic distribution of removed videos suggest that TikTok may be removing a small proportion of content that promotes the use of e-cigarettes, metadata of remaining videos indicate an increase in viewer engagement. TikTok’s removal of explicit substance-related hashtags from the platform could be a step towards preventing adolescents from being exposed to harmful behaviours and substances online. However, the platform should consider enforcing effective age restrictions on content that promotes substance use in a positive light.
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spelling pubmed-88348192022-02-12 Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study Rutherford, Brienna N. Sun, Tianze Lim, Carmen C. W. Chung, Jack Cheng, Brandon Davidson, Lily Tisdale, Calvert Leung, Janni Stjepanović, Daniel Connor, Jason P. Chan, Gary C. K. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Aim: There are concerns regarding what young people are exposed to on TikTok due to trending content promoting e-cigarette use through humour, marketing and lifestyle acceptability. Using baseline data from November 2020, we aimed to examine how much content from a sample of popular vaping videos remained accessible at 9- and 12-month follow-ups. We aimed to monitor changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) before and after the U.S. Congressional Hearing on youth protection measures on social media in October 2021. Methods: Hashtag-based keywords were used to collect the most viewed publicly available e-cigarette related videos on TikTok (N = 802) from inception to November 2020 to form a baseline. Researchers conducted a longitudinal descriptive study using this data, with 9- and 12-month follow-ups to measure changes in viewer engagement (using metadata) and content availability. Findings: Of the 802 videos from the baseline, 562 remained at the 9-month follow-up and 511 remained at the 12-month follow-up. At the 12-month follow-up, the majority of vaping-related hashtags were removed by TikTok after the Congressional Hearing. Between the baseline and 9-month follow up, views increased by 1.4% and likes increased by 4.4%. At 12-month follow-up, views had increased by 1.7% and likes by 4.2% compared to baseline data. Whilst 291 videos were no longer publicly accessible at 12-month follow-up, 39 of these were made inaccessible by the content creators. The most viewed and most liked vaping videos at baseline were still publicly available. Conclusions: Whilst the depiction type and thematic distribution of removed videos suggest that TikTok may be removing a small proportion of content that promotes the use of e-cigarettes, metadata of remaining videos indicate an increase in viewer engagement. TikTok’s removal of explicit substance-related hashtags from the platform could be a step towards preventing adolescents from being exposed to harmful behaviours and substances online. However, the platform should consider enforcing effective age restrictions on content that promotes substance use in a positive light. MDPI 2022-01-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8834819/ /pubmed/35162170 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031141 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rutherford, Brienna N.
Sun, Tianze
Lim, Carmen C. W.
Chung, Jack
Cheng, Brandon
Davidson, Lily
Tisdale, Calvert
Leung, Janni
Stjepanović, Daniel
Connor, Jason P.
Chan, Gary C. K.
Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title_full Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title_fullStr Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title_full_unstemmed Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title_short Changes in Viewer Engagement and Accessibility of Popular Vaping Videos on TikTok: A 12-Month Prospective Study
title_sort changes in viewer engagement and accessibility of popular vaping videos on tiktok: a 12-month prospective study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8834819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35162170
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031141
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