The Diffusion of JUUL Among Teens
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/style/the-juul-is-too-cool.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/health/juul-fda-vaping-ecigarettes.html
In recent news, the Food and Drug Administration has declared that teenage use of e-cigs (electronic cigarettes) has reached “an epidemic proportion” and has cracked down on teen advertisement, flavored ‘pod’ production, and sales to minors. In particular, the FDA has been targeting the JUUL, a sleek e-cigarette that looks like a flash drive and delivers potent nicotine hits. This is largely due to the fact that according to Nielsen data, JUUL controls over 72% of the e-cig market, and is currently valued at over $16 billion. That is a larger valuation than companies like Lyft (~ $15 billion), and also a higher market share than Marlboro cigarettes achieved at the peak of its product’s measured success [1].
The issue that the FDA has been concerned with over these statistics is how many of these adopters are adolescent… E-cigarettes are creating a new problem – hooking teenagers who have never used nicotine products before. Because the developing adolescent brain is vulnerable to addiction, the proliferation of JUULs among teens is becoming especially worrisome and it seems as if getting a JUUL is as easy as ever – minors are able to buy JUULs without question, a product that was meant to wean addicts off of cigarettes, but is ironically attracting teens who have never smoked before.
The spread and popularity of JUUL among teenagers can largely be attributed to many of the concepts that we learned in class such as diffusion in networks, the diffusion of innovations, and cascading behavior. Because many of our interactions with the rest of the world happen at a local level, we often don’t care much about what the ‘global’ population is doing, and rather focus on the decisions made by friends, family, and colleagues. Although smoking and vaping may be frowned upon by society as a whole, teens are generally more concerned about what their friends and peers are doing. This leads to diffusion of innovations – the spread of a new technology or idea through a group of people. Part of this diffusion of JUUL among teenagers can be attributed to informational effects – teens observe the decisions and behaviors of their friends, which provides them with the indirect information and incentives to try the innovation themselves. Although the population at large may consider smoking and vaping ‘uncool’, once some of a teen’s friends start using the JUUL product and enjoying it, their friends would be more inclined to try it as well. The fact that nicotine products are addicting also play a large role in the propagation and continued use of e-cigs. The spread of JUUL on the local level eventually spread to teens outside of these local clusters through effects defined by cascading behavior. Basically, in a network where one only cares about what their immediate ‘neighbors’ are doing, it’s very possible for a small set of initial adopters (teens who begin JUUL-ing) to start a chain-effect that effectively spreads the innovation globally. These articles along with the concepts that we learned in class can be used to help stop/slow the spread of e-cigarettes.