{"doi":"10.2196/73193","title":"Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Perceptions of a Pop-Up Aimed at Combating the Spread of E-Cigarette Misinformation on Social Media: Cross-Sectional Survey Study","abstract":"Background: Social media is an important source of e-cigarette-related information for adolescents and young adults. However, misinformation is being shared across platforms, which may encourage e-cigarette use. Objective: This study aims to examine adolescent and young adult perceptions of a novel pop-up on social media that provides links to vaping-related health information from credible sources (eg, CDC). Methods: Between December 2023 and March 2024, participants aged 13-24 years (N=5326) completed a web-based cross-sectional survey. Participants were asked to select from 4 positive (eg, useful to share, helpful to check health-related information) and 4 negative or neutral sentiments (eg, usually ignore such notifications, would not trust it) to reflect their perceptions about a mock pop-up that provided a link to e-cigarette-related information on social media. Results: More participants endorsed positive sentiments than negative or neutral sentiments in relation to the pop-up. Specifically, 1078 (20.8%) endorsed two or more positive sentiments, and 690 (13.3%) endorsed two or more negative or neutral sentiments when searching for \"vaping\" on social media; similarly 913 (17.6%) participants endorsed two or more positive sentiments and 690 (13.3%) endorsed two or more negative or neutral sentiments when viewing e-cigarette-related posts in their feed (all P<.001). Among those who were searching for e-cigarette-related information, participants aged 13-18 years were more likely to endorse at least two positive sentiments compared to those aged 19-24 years (ie, 646, 22.0% vs 423, 19.2%, respectively), those who had never used e-cigarettes compared with those who had ever used them (ie, 674, 23.6% vs 404, 17.3%, respectively), and those who last used e-cigarettes more than 30 days ago compared with those who had used them in the past 30 days (ie, 187, 19.8% vs 217, 15.6%, respectively). Similarly, among participants who viewed e-cigarette-related posts in their feed, those who had never used e-cigarettes were more likely to endorse two or more positive perceptions compared to those who had ever used e-cigarettes (ie, 563, 19.7% vs 350, 15.0%), and those who had last used e-cigarettes more than 30 days ago (ie, 159, 16.9% vs 191, 13.7%) were more likely to endorse two or more positive perceptions compared to those who had used them in the past 30 days (all Ps<.001). Participants who had never used e-cigarettes were also less likely to trust pop-ups, compared to those who had ever used them, whether while searching for e-cigarette-related information on social media or while seeing e-cigarette-related posts in their feed (approximately, 19%vs 24%). There were no significant differences in the endorsement of negative or neutral sentiments. However, participants aged 13-18 years were more likely to ignore such notifications while viewing e-cigarette-related posts in their social media feed compared to those aged 19-24 years (ie, 850, 28.9% vs 563 25%); further, participants who had never used e-cigarettes were less trusting of e-cigarette-related information while searching for vaping or in their feed. Conclusions: Positive perception of a social media pop-up indicates its potential to prevent e-cigarette-related misinformation. Further development of a pop-up requires strategies to better engage and inform adolescents and young adults, specifically younger individuals, as they may be more likely to disregard pop-ups, and older individuals and those who used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, as they are potentially more dismissive of such information.","journal":"JMIR Formative Research","year":2025,"id":553896,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9526,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":232386,"name":"Shivani Mathur Gaiha","orcid":"0000-0002-0636-8936","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1450787,"name":"Jessica L Maturo","orcid":"0000-0001-8555-2565","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":9,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:54:45.872391Z","pmid":"40829154","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}