Khaberni - This year has seen a series of headlines that talk about the «tobacco moment» in social media, as regulatory bodies and courts have turned their attention to technological platforms.
It is easy to understand why critics of social media hope for a similar turning point to what happened with smoking.
In the mid-20th century, nearly half of adults in the United States smoked, but by 2020, this percentage had dropped to about 13%. It is important to note that the decline in smoking did not occur without negative repercussions: many of the poorest communities remained addicted. Does the same apply to the use of social media?
As Allan M. Brandt states in his famous book «The Cigarette Century», smoking was once a «product and behavior with true mass appeal». In 1925, the American magazine «Mercury» announced that cigarettes had become «the most widespread commodity among people», noting that «the banker and his shoeshiner often agree on their preferences in this matter». Similarly, the use of social media was widespread in its early decades. It was not surprising to see a Hollywood star immersed in Facebook or Instagram, just as with a teenager on a bus.
But when academics began linking smoking to lung cancer, it was the college graduates who first paid attention to this information. A study shows that smoking rates among the most educated in the United States began to decline as early as 1954, shortly after the first articles were published in the general press on this topic.
By the 1980s, there was a clear socio-economic disparity in the declining rates of smoking. In 1985, the «Wall Street Journal» reported a 37-year-old woman saying she quit smoking because of peer pressure: she faced disapproving looks at dinner parties. She told the Wall Street Journal: «I recently read that a third of people still smoke. Where are they? I don’t see them.»
This published material included several different predictions for the future. One academic said that cigarette smoking, despite declining at varying rates, «will disappear over the next twenty to twenty-five years». Another believed that smoking patterns would reinforce socio-economic disparities, stating, «I am convinced that smoking-related diseases will increasingly become a class phenomenon».
Now, we know that the second prediction was accurate. Getting rid of strong addictive habits—or even avoiding acquiring them from the start—becomes more challenging if access to education, supportive peers, and healthcare is limited. In the UK, the likelihood of smoking among people in the poorest fifth of local areas is more than three times higher (with a rate of up to 22.6%) compared to those in the least impoverished fifth (with a rate of around 6.6%).
While the British government aspired to reduce smoking rates to 5% or less by 2030, an independent report released in 2022 warned that without further action, England would fall at least seven years behind in meeting this goal, and the poorest areas in society would not achieve it until 2044.
Is it possible that the use of social media could evolve in the same way? I already notice that the call for a «smartphone-free childhood» and limiting screen time is mostly led by middle-class parents, who are consuming emerging research linking social media use to harm to young people’s mental health. There is also some evidence that young people from less affluent backgrounds are more susceptible to negative experiences on social media.
However, there are fundamental differences between smoking and social media. One of the most critical factors determining whether a person smokes is their parents' smoking history. As for social media, I do not yet see (so far) significant evidence of parents abandoning their habits of using it, even if they impose restrictions on their children.
This might make sense: smoking is hazardous to everyone, while the nature of social media algorithms is to adapt to each user. True, some adults might indulge in social media, but an adult addicted to cat videos might only risk wasting their time and effort.
