Below is a news brief on a study appearing in the August issue of Pediatrics, the peer-reviewed, scientific journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

For Release: Monday, July 20, 2009, 12:01 am (ET)

When teens surf the Internet, are they exposed to tobacco content or imagery? The study, “Exposure to Tobacco on the Internet: Content Analysis of Adolescents’ Internet Use,” tracked the Web pages viewed by 346 teens between the ages of 14 and 17 years. During a one-month period of data collection, these adolescents viewed 1.2 million Web pages. Of those pages, 0.72 percent contained tobacco or smoking content. Pro-tobacco content was found on 1,916 pages, anti-tobacco content on 1,572 pages, and complex and/or unclear content on 5,055 pages. Most of the tobacco-related content seen by teens was found on social networking sites. MySpace in particular represented 53 percent of the pages on which tobacco content was found. Previous studies have found a link between exposure to tobacco content in traditional media and adolescent smoking. The authors caution that as more communication occurs online in social networking sites, this may also impact adolescent smoking.
 
Editor’s note: The August issue of Pediatrics also features the article, “Evaluation of School-Based Multisession Versus Single-Session, Group Smoking-Cessation Interventions for Self-Described Adolescent Smokers.” It will be published online July 27.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.