ABS 113: "Let’s Disguise this Vape with Me”. Does TikTok Enforce Platform Policy about Vaping Content?

Tajanae Barton ¹ , Kim Minji ² , Shannon Watkins ³

¹ Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
² Department of Health, Promotion, Education, and Behavior.
³ College of Public Health, University of Iowa, IA

Van Wickle (2025) Volume 1, ABS113

Introduction: Exposure to e-cigarette social media content may increase vaping among young people. TikTok's policy as of February 2024 does not allow videos that contain promotion, sales, and use of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. If TikTok is negligent in enforcing the policy, online content may normalize e-cigarette use among young people.

Methods: We conducted content and thematic analysis of e-cigarette videos from TikTok collected between November and December 2023. We collected 513 videos using relevant keywords (e.g., #vape4life, #nicfien) and surveilling the personalized feed (“For You Page”). Among them, 106 videos expressed an overall favorable portrayal of e-cigarettes. We created a codebook to categorize the videos as violating policy and no violation but still normalizing e-cigarette use. A thematic analysis was conducted to understand these videos further.

Results: Violation videos (n=99) depicted youth sharing their favorable experiences using e-cigarettes (n=16), vape consumption (n=21), marketing (n=5), disguising of products (n =2), and underage vape consumption (n=1). Seven videos with positive portrayals did not technically violate the policy. Instead, these videos had aspects that normalized e-cigarette usage as normal or socially acceptable among younger audiences.

Discussion: Without stronger content moderation on TikTok, favorable e-cigarette videos may continue normalizing e-cigarette use among young people unless there is a stronger content moderation on the platform. Further analysis will examine the influence of TikTok’s new policy, updated in May 2024.