Children who spend a lot of time on social media more likely to vape

Youngsters who spend a lot of time on social media are more likely to vape and smoke cigarettes, research suggests.

The more time children and young people spend on social media, the more likely they are to be regular users, experts found.

This was particularly apparent at higher levels of use, with those on social media more than seven hours a day almost eight times more likely to smoke than non-users, and four times more likely to vape.

The study, published in the journal Thorax, included data for 10,808 people aged 10 to 25 from the UK Household Longitudinal Study 2015–2021.