Do mobile phones replace cigarette smoking among teenagers? | Tobacco Control

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Do mobile phones replace cigarette smoking among teenagers?

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Not quite convincing
Clive Bates
Published on: 19 November 2003

Published on: 19 November 2003
Not quite convincing
- Clive Bates, Personal
I'd like to challenge the suggestion in this paper that mobile phone use does not reduce smoking, simply because smoking teenagers are more likely to own mobile phones.
The hypothesis advanced by Ann Charlton and I is that mobile phones share some of the same charatcteristics that attract young people to smoking (initiation to adult life, peer bonding, individualistic expression, brand identification etc). I...
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I'd like to challenge the suggestion in this paper that mobile phone use does not reduce smoking, simply because smoking teenagers are more likely to own mobile phones.
The hypothesis advanced by Ann Charlton and I is that mobile phones share some of the same charatcteristics that attract young people to smoking (initiation to adult life, peer bonding, individualistic expression, brand identification etc). If this is the case, then they are competing with smoking, and with other expenditures, for teenagers' spending money. If this is the case, it wouldn't be entirely surprising to see more mobile phone use among smokers that can afford both. We implied that needs may be met by mobiles rather than smoking, but it is possible that teenagers seek these attractive attributes from both mobiles and smoking.
Whether mobile phone ownership reduces smoking is another matter... and it depends on how teenagers that don't have a lot to spend or have other things to spend their money on decide their priorities. It is quite possible to reconcile higher use of mobile phones among smoking teenagers with lower overall teenage smoking as a result of mobile phone use. The difference would be in those non-smokers that would otherwise have become smokers had they not chosen to spend their discretionary cash on mobile phones instead of smoking. Those that would have been uninterested in the shared attributes of smoking and mobile phones would tend neither to smoke nor to make much use of mobile phones - hence a lower rate on average among non-smokers even though. In other words, what matters is the behaviour of the those wavering between smoking and not smoking, not the overall averages.
Whether the fall in UK teenage smoking can be attrributed in any part to the rise of mobile phone use is impossible to determine. It could have reflected a period of adjustment in the spending patterns of young people that eventually settled with the mobile phone being a 'must-have' accessory rather than a choice. Smoking rates among teenagers have remained lower than the high water mark of 1996, but are creeping up. As teenagers have more spending money, more would be able to afford both.
PS. it remains a hypothesis and I don't claim it to be established as true. I just don't think that it is convincingly falsified by this paper.
Regards
Clive Bates
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Conflict of Interest:
None declared.
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