Health information is commonly accessed online. The majority of adults now use the internet — and increasingly, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — as their first source of health-related information when they are looking for health and medical advice. This freely available information on social media, however, comes at a cost because of the ubiquity of inaccurate, misleading and outright false information that can have negative consequences on people’s health choices and behaviors.
For years, e-cigarette manufacturers falsely advertised through television ads and social media influencers that e-cigarettes contain only water vapor and are harmless. This is untrue and it plays down the risks and addictiveness of e-cigarette use — and it may be partly responsible for the youth vaping epidemic.
As public health and tobacco control researchers, we are also concerned about the adverse impacts of inaccurate information that e-cigarettes are just as, or more harmful than, smoking on cigarette smokers. This misinformation can deter cigarette smokers from lowering their health risks by switching to e-cigarettes completely and thus, lowering the harms of exposing their loved ones to secondhand smoke exposure.
There is general agreement among medical experts that the short-term health risks from e-cigarettes are considerably lower than smoking regular cigarettes, although the longer-term risks and benefits are not known. The Centers for Disease Control and...
Read Full Story: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/571253-social-media-misinformation-about-e-cigarettes-is-harmful-for-smokers
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