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Nicotine exposure before age 25 disrupts brain development, causing permanent cognitive impairments.

Despite the risks and new regulations, vape products continue to be marketed aggressively to young people.

Many teens are unaware that vape products contain nicotine.

By Brian Coon, MA, LCAS, CCS, MAC, with Becky Shipkosky

In December of 2025, Janica Mendenhall took her daughter to a local urgent care. The 16-year-old had a respiratory infection with excessive coughing that worried her mother. Providers at the clinic sent the teen to a nearby hospital and, as of the latest update in mid-January, she remained there on life support.

Media reports characterize her condition as “severe complications of the flu, exacerbated by vaping,” which the daughter had taken up just one year prior. This is only the latest; a Google news search returns dozens of such stories within the past year alone.

As part of our ongoing examination of e-cigarettes and their use, dangers, and cultural context, we’re taking a look at how vaping is different among adolescents and young adults (AYAs). We’ll explore what it is about vaping that makes it more harmful than other tobacco products, plus why users under 25 are uniquely and especially vulnerable.

What’s Different About Vaping?

For those of us with children between the ages of 14 and 25 years, cigarettes were likely prevalent when we were in high school or college. And while conventional cigarettes are harmful to young bodies in some of the same ways that e-cigarettes are, the latter come with some of their own particular, or multiplied, dangers. The following are qualities unique to e-cigarettes that may cause AYAs greater vulnerability or harm.

Social Media Marketing

Brand accounts offer coupons and discounts, often with extra incentives for users who tag friends. Influencer accounts show off tricks like rings and shapes, demonstrate device-hacking for (sometimes dangerous) unintended uses, and sneak product placement into youth-popular content like video game livestreams.

Vape makers also have the advantage of designing the delivery system itself. While a cigarette pack in the '90s may have featured a cartoon camel, the cigarettes inside always looked the same. While the most egregiously youth-appealing designs have been outlawed in most places, fun colors and shapes, candy-inspired designs, and cute names still effectively draw young people’s attention.

Candy-, soda-, dessert-, and fruit-flavored vape juice are legal in most states. These flavors not only appeal to young people; they also mask unpleasant flavor or harshness from harmful nicotine, encourage more frequent use, and reduce risk perception.

Due to an effect called false consensus, teens often overestimate how many of their peers are engaging in substance use (Noland et al., 2016). In any case, vape products are........

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