Promotion of E-Cigarettes on TikTok and Regulatory Considerations

E-cigarettes are promoted extensively on TikTok and other social media platforms. Current policies to restrict e-cigarette promotion on these platforms and their enforcement seems insufficient. This paper aims to understand how e-cigarettes are being promoted on TikTok and provide insights into the effectiveness of current TikTok policies. Seven popular hashtag-based keywords were used to identify TikTok accounts, and their videos related to e-cigarettes. Posts were independently coded by two coders. Collectively, the 264 videos received 2,470,373 views, 166,462 likes, and 3,426 comments. The overwhelming majority of videos (97.7%) portrayed e-cigarettes positively, and these posts received 98.7% of the total views and 98.2% of the total likes. A total of 44 posts (16.7%) clearly violated TikTok’s own content policy. The findings of the current study suggest that a variety of predominantly pro-vaping content is available on TikTok. Current policies and moderation processes appear to be insufficient in restricting the spread of pro e-cigarette content on TikTok specifically, and social media in general, resulting in health implications for this platforms predominantly young users.