More Than Half of U.S. Teens Who Vape Do So To Deal With Stress, Anxiety: Study

New research suggests that the primary reason older teens vape is to relax and relieve tension, followed by boredom, addiction and taste.

When e-cigarettes and vaping first became popular, teens reported that the primary reason they vaped was because of the taste and to experiment. However, following efforts to address the teen vaping epidemic in the U.S., and ban fruity flavors that appeal to prior non-smokers, a new study suggests that teens who still vape now indicate that they do it mainly to relax, due to high levels of stress.

Over the past decade, vaping and e-cigarettes, jointly known as electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), have become the most popular form of nicotine use among teens, largely reversing progress that had been made reducing cigarette smoking among that age group.

As a result of the introduction of fruity flavor vape pens and aggressive marketing for products like JUUL, which were designed to make it easy for teens to conceal their vaping habits, a new generation of Americans developed life-long nicotine addictions from e-cigarettes.

Following substantial efforts by federal health officials to limit access to e-cigarettes, and control marketing of the products, teen vaping rates have declined in recent years. However, they still present serious health risks for youths, such as exposure to toxic cancer-causing chemicals, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and damage to DNA in the same way that tobacco cigarettes damage DNA.

In a new study published last week in the medical journal Pediatrics, researchers from the University of Michigan examined the reasons that teens still vape, indicating that stress relief and helping them relax are now the largest draws to e-cigarettes.

In this new study, a research team led by Dr. Megan E Patrick studied vaping among teens and the common reasons for using e-cigarettes. The study focused on reasons for vaping among teens in eighth, 10th, and 12th grade. The researchers used data from the Monitoring the Future study collected from 2021 to 2023 from in-school web surveys.

According to the findings, among teens who reported vaping daily, 71% said the most important reason was to relax or relieve tension. Additionally, 49% of teens who didn’t vape daily but reported vaping over the past year also said relaxing and relieving stress was the main reason they vaped.

The researchers noted this is a significant shift in the reasons teens vape since 2015, when the top reasons reported for vaping were experimentation, taste and boredom. Relaxation was only the fifth reason teens reported vaping then.

These findings come as mental health experts warn of increasing stress among the U.S. teen population following the pandemic, which has led to an increase in depression, anxiety and suicide. A study published in September by researchers from the University of Washington warns that stress from the COVID pandemic appears to have led to physical alterations to many teens’ brains, including cortical thinning in areas of the brain that affect social cognition and interactions, particularly among young women and girls.

The new data showed that among teens who vaped daily, one-third said the next most important reason they vaped was because they were bored. The third and fourth most important reasons were that they were hooked and because they enjoyed the taste.

For teens who vaped over the past month but not daily, the reasons they cited why they vaped were to experiment with their friends and because they were bored.

Teens in the eighth grade frequently cited to “feel good,” to have a good time with their friends, and to control their weight more than other grades. Teens in the 10th grade more frequently said they vaped to avoid getting caught smoking traditional cigarettes.

However, high school seniors frequently said they vaped because it was more convenient than tobacco cigarettes, because they were hooked, and to help quit smoking cigarettes.

Overall, the data showed that as teens aged, they began vaping more. Roughly 12% of teens in eighth grade reported vaping over the past year compared to 26% of 12th graders. And 2% of eighth graders said they vaped daily compared to 4% of 10th graders and 8% of 12th graders.

“Nearly half of adolescents who vaped nicotine in the past year or month (and >70% who vaped near-daily) reported doing so to relax or relieve tension,” the researcher’s concluded. “Screening for nicotine vaping alongside stress and anxiety may be an important tool for early intervention efforts because using to relax is associated with increased risk of future dependence.”

Patrick’s team determined that more research is needed about vaping habits among teen dropouts since substance use is often linked with dropping out.