Department of Healthcare Research and Policy, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, California, USA.
Tob Control. 2023 Aug;32(e2):e153-e159. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056937. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
Increased public health and regulatory scrutiny concerning the youth vaping epidemic has led to greater attention to promotion and sales of vaping products on social media platforms.
We used unsupervised machine learning to identify and characterise sale offers of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and associated products on Instagram. We examined types of sellers, geographic ENDS location and use of age verification.
Our methodology was composed of three phases: data collection, topic modelling and content analysis. We used data mining approaches to query hashtags related to ENDS product use among young adults to collect Instagram posts. For topic modelling, we applied an unsupervised machine learning approach to thematically categorise and identify topic clusters associated with selling activity. Content analysis was then used to characterise offers for sale of ENDS products.
From 70 725 posts, we identified 3331 engaged in sale of ENDS products. Posts originated from 20 different countries and were roughly split between individual (46.3%) and retail sellers (43.4%), with linked online sellers (8.8%) representing a smaller volume. ENDS products most frequently offered for sale were flavoured e-liquids (53.0%) and vaping devices (20.5%). Online sellers offering flavoured e-liquids were less likely to use age verification at point of purchase (29% vs 64%) compared with other products.
Instagram is a global venue for unregulated ENDS sales, including flavoured products, and access to websites lacking age verification. Such posts may violate Instagram's policies and US federal and state law, necessitating more robust review and enforcement to prevent ENDS uptake and access.
公众健康意识和监管审查力度的增强，使人们对社交媒体平台上电子烟产品的推广和销售越发关注。
我们使用无监督机器学习来识别和描述 Instagram 上电子烟（ENDS）及其相关产品的销售信息。我们检查了销售者的类型、ENDS 的地理位置和年龄验证的使用情况。
我们的方法由三个阶段组成：数据收集、主题建模和内容分析。我们使用数据挖掘方法查询与年轻人使用 ENDS 产品相关的标签，以收集 Instagram 帖子。对于主题建模，我们应用了一种无监督机器学习方法，对与销售活动相关的主题集群进行分类和识别。然后，使用内容分析来描述销售 ENDS 产品的信息。
从 70725 条帖子中，我们确定了 3331 条与销售 ENDS 产品有关的帖子。这些帖子来自 20 个不同的国家，大致分为个人卖家（46.3%）和零售商（43.4%），而链接的在线卖家（8.8%）则代表了较小的一部分。最常销售的 ENDS 产品是调味电子烟液（53.0%）和电子烟设备（20.5%）。与其他产品相比，销售调味电子烟液的在线卖家在购买时更不可能使用年龄验证（29%比 64%）。
Instagram 是一个不受监管的 ENDS 销售场所，包括调味产品，并且可以访问缺乏年龄验证的网站。这些帖子可能违反了 Instagram 的政策以及美国联邦和州的法律，需要更严格的审查和执行，以防止年轻人使用电子烟。
