Is social media our new quitline? A descriptive study assessing youtube coverage of tobacco cessation

Tobacco use and exposure are leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the past decade, educational efforts to reduce tobacco use and exposure have extended to social media, including video-sharing platforms. YouTube is one of the most publicly accessed video-sharing platforms.

This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to identify and describe sources, formats, and content of widely viewed YouTube videos on smoking cessation.

In August to September 2023, the keywords "stop quit smoking" were used to search in YouTube and identify 100 videos with the highest view count.

Collectively, these videos were viewed over 220 million times. The majority (n = 35) were posted by nongovernmental/organization sources, with a smaller number posted by consumers (n = 25), and only eleven were posted by governmental agencies. The format used in the highest number of videos was the testimonial (n = 32 videos, over 77 million views). Other popular formats included animation (n = 23 videos, over 90 million views) and talk by professional (n = 20 videos, almost 43 million views). Video content included evidence-based and non-evidence-based practices. Evidence-based strategies aligned with U.S. Public Health Service Tobacco Treatment Guidelines (e.g. health systems approach in tobacco treatment, medication management). Non-evidence-based strategies included mindfulness and hypnotherapy. One key finding was that environmental tobacco exposure received scant coverage across the videos.

Social media such as YouTube promises to reach large audiences at low cost without requiring high reading literacy. Additional attention is needed to create videos with up-to-date, accurate information that can engage consumers.