The popularity of e-cigarette posts on Instagram featuring cartoons

Promotions and flashy marketing for e-cigarettes appeal to youth, and a new study highlights how ads featuring cartoons could also play into that appeal. Scientists analyzed nearly 2,000 Instagram posts advertising e-cigarettes during a three-week period in 2019, and found that more than 7% contained at least one cartoon somewhere in the image, while the vast majority of the posts were marked as promotions. More than 100 different e-cigarette companies used cartoons in their marketing, and posts with cartoons received almost twice as many "likes" than posts without cartoons. Future research should look at whether these cartoons influenced attitudes about vaping, the authors suggest.