Abstract

Introduction: The use of little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs) is rising but a few educational efforts focus on preventing their use (Sterling et al., 2016) (Richardson et al., 2013). Marketing and advertising of LCCs have been targeted toward individuals who are of a low socioeconomic status and African American (Cantrell et al.,2013). Individual users can upload videos on YouTube featuring little cigars, and cigarillos. The flavoring of little cigars and cigarillos is a draw to adolescences and young adults to start smoking (Nyman et al. 2016). Characterizing flavors of LCCs YouTube videos needs to be examined because it may influence adolescents to smoke LCCs.

Aim: To examine the frequency of characterizing flavors little cigar and cigarillo in YouTube videos.

Methods: Data from YouTube were analyzed for this study. We used Google Insights which shows the most frequently searched terms, to examine what should be searched. “Cigarillo” and “Black and Mild” were found to be the most common as of January 22, 2017.

Results: Of the 80 videos collected a total of 54 videos were analyzed. Half (50%, n=27) of the videos contained a mention of characterizing flavors. On average, videos that contained both characterizing flavors were viewed 249,753 times.

Discussion: Half of the videos contained a description of characterizing flavors. However, the videos with characterizing flavors were viewed 249,753 times on average, which may entice youths to begin smoking tobacco products. Understanding LCC content on YouTube may have implications for developing health messages to reduce the likelihood that adolescents will begin smoking LCCs.