Nearly half of Juul's followers on Twitter last year were teenagers, report complaints

According to a new report, Juul said he had aggressively tried to restrict the use of his products by teenagers while the Food and Drug Administration continued to pressure them. However, youth may have made up a significant percentage of the brand's social follow-up on Twitter in 2018..

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Pediatrics On Monday, Juul's official account data examined in April of last year and found that about 44.9% of the public accounts following the trademark belonged to users aged 13 to 17 years. Approximately 80 percent of the public accounts published as a result of Juul belonged to users between the ages of 13 and 20, who were still under the legal age to purchase tobacco products in certain parts of the United States.

"While e-cigarette sales have grown exponentially in recent years, and vaping is gaining popularity among young people across the country, the results of this study represent an emerging public health issue, highlighting how young people can easily be exposed to Tobacco Product Marketing Messages ", Lead Author Annice Kim, Ph.D., Senior Health Scientist at RTI International and Director of the Digital Health Impact Analysis Program, said in a statement .

Youth vaping has exploded in recent years and Kim said social media companies need to put in place better anti-aging policies to ensure that adult products are not sold to teens.

In a statement to Gizmodo, a spokeswoman for Juul said by email that the company was questioning the methodology on which the research is based, claiming that it "differs considerably" from the data made available to Juul by the tools of Twitter and CX Social of Clarabridge. According to the company, May's data from last year showed that only 3.9% of teens aged 13 to 17 were following his Twitter account.

"Twitter does not allow automatic limitation of age. At the time of the author's study, we had a team of JUUL Labs that proactively prevented minor users from manually tracking our Twitter feed. We are doing everything in our power to prevent young people from engaging our company on Twitter and, as stated above, do not advertise JUUL products via our account, "said the spokesman, adding that the company was also striving to remove the content of third-party products promoting youth products from social media.

The authors of the study did not immediately return a request for comment about their research.

Juul has been accused in numerous reports as well as by former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb of marketing his products to teenagers, leading what is now described as an "epidemic" of children clinging to children. vaping products allegedly intended (if Juul must be taken his word) for cessation. As part of its "action plan" to limit the use of its products by young people, Juul last year swept its social media, its bold marketing and its juvenile marketing that – in addition to its fruity aromas and its USB design – may have helped it with a young population. Juul has also completely closed down many of his social accounts and says that he uses Twitter exclusively for "non-promotional communications".

Be that as it may, this week's study is not the first to report that a significant number of young people could engage in the brand's presence on social networks. A year-long analysis of Juul's tweets by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Faculty of Medicine, published last year Journal of Adolescent Health found that one in four public accounts that retweeted the company appeared to belong to adolescents under 18 years of age.

In a statement at the time, the main author of the study, Kar-Hai Chu, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health de Pitt, said that Juul asserted that he "was not trying to target teens with their advertising". or sales, but our research clearly indicates that a sizeable proportion of their Twitter audience is exactly this population. "