Research that my colleagues and I recently conducted demonstrates that electronic cigarette product placement in music videos is associated with vaping among minors.
The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998 prohibits product placement for cigarettes and chew tobacco in television, music videos and motion pictures, but those restrictions do not apply to electronic cigarettes.
My team and I have been working the past three years to determine the overall extent of electronic cigarette product placement in music videos. We’ve also been working to determine if exposure to these videos is related to electronic cigarette use among young adults.
In a recent study, we found that participants exposed to any electronic cigarette product placement or imagery in music videos were more likely to have used an electronic cigarette in the past month compared to participants with no exposure.
Music videos receive billions of views
From the early 1980s to the early 2000s music videos were widespread on television and made up most of the content on MTV and VH1. As these networks moved away from airing music videos and switched to airing reality television, music videos became less of a cultural phenomenon.
However, when YouTube was created in 2005 and exploded in popularity in 2010, music videos made a comeback. Today music videos by major recording artists receive billions of views. Pop stars’ official music video accounts, like Justin…
