Effects of Social Media Use on Young Adults' E-Cigarette Use

Identifying and Addressing the Effects of Social Media Use on Young Adults' E-Cigarette Use: A Solutions-Oriented Approach

The goal of this clinical trial is to test the effects of social media use on e-cigarette use in young adults who use e-cigarettes. The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Does reducing social media use change young adults' e-cigarette use?
• Does reducing social media use change things such as young adults' mental health and what they see on social media?

Participants will complete surveys and submit screenshots showing how much time they spend on social media.

Researchers will compare young adults who reduce their social media use to young adults who use social media as usual, to see if their e-cigarette use differs.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Electronic Cigarette Use
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Social Media Use Reduction

Detailed Description

The overall goals of this project are to understand how young adults' social media use affects their nicotine vaping and to identify intervention targets that mitigate social media's impact on vaping. Prevalence of vaping and social media use among young adults have increased in tandem. Exposure to vaping-related social media content is common and is associated with vaping. Intense social media use appears to contribute to young adults' increased mental health symptoms, which are linked to tobacco product use. This project aims to contribute to scientific understanding of the causal links between social media use and vaping in young adulthood. Young adults with past-month vaping will report time spent on social media, vaping-related social media content exposure, social comparison on social media, mental health, and vaping behavior. After a 1-month baseline measurement period, they will be randomized to reduce their social media use (incentivized) or use social media as usual for a 3-month experimental period. Longitudinal within- and between-subjects analyses will test relationships between time spent on social media, risk factors for vaping, and vaping behavior. Specific research aims are to: (1) investigate the relationships between a reduction in social media use and: a) vaping content exposure, b) social comparison, and c) mental health, and (2) examine whether reducing social media use reduces past-month vaping days, vaping episodes per vaping day, and puffs per vaping episode.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 200
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Erin A Vogel, PhD; Phone Number: 50493 405-271-8001; Email: erin-vogel@ouhsc.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • Oklahoma
    • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 73104
      • Recruiting
      • University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
      • Contact: Erin A Vogel, PhD; Phone Number: 50493 405-271-8001; Email: erin-vogel@ouhsc.edu

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age 18-25
• Daily social media use
• Ownership of a smartphone
• Vaping (i.e., use of a nicotine e-cigarette) on 1-19 days of the past 30 days
• Residing in the United States

Exclusion Criteria:

-Lack of capacity to provide informed consent

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Social Media Use Reduction	Behavioral: Social Media Use Reduction; Participants will be incentivized to reduce their social media use by a pre-specified percentage from baseline.
No Intervention: Social Media Use as Usual

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Past-month vaping days	Number of days the participant vaped nicotine in the past 30 days	Collected at baseline, 1mo, 3mo, 6mo

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Episodes per vaping day	Average number of times the participant used a nicotine vaping device on each day (of the past 30) they vaped nicotine	Collected at baseline, 1mo, 3mo, 6mo
Puffs per vaping episode	Past-month number of puffs per nicotine vaping episode (1-20)	Collected at baseline, 1mo, 3mo, 6mo

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Oklahoma
• Collaborators: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Southern California; Stanford University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Erin A Vogel, PhD, University of Oklahoma

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 4, 2023
• Primary Completion (Estimated): April 1, 2024
• Study Completion (Estimated): April 1, 2024

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 15, 2023
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 15, 2023
• First Posted (Actual): November 22, 2023

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): February 20, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 19, 2024
• Last Verified: February 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: young adult; e-cigarette; social media; nicotine vaping
• Other Study ID Numbers: 15427; K01DA055073 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO
• IPD Plan Description: Deidentified data will be available from the Principal Investigator upon reasonable request.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No