Dr Miriam Stoppard looks at social media misinformation about vaping
Quitting smoking can be difficult, and it seems social media can make the process even tougher. Because even when we sense the health information we read online might not be true, we can still be guided by it.
Researchers in Bristol looked at the effect Twitter misinformation had on people who were considering moving from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes in a bid to quit.
Astonishingly both UK and US adult smokers who were considering a switch to vaping were deterred by tweets falsely implying e-cigs are more harmful than conventional cigarettes.
Bristol University and Pennsylvania University researchers are the first to examine the effect of this type of misinformation, which has important implications for public health.
In the Cancer Research UK-funded study, 2,400 adult smokers were recruited from the US and UK to take part in an online experiment.
Miriam Stoppard – Mirror – 2021-10-25.
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