Media Literacy for Nicotine: Teaching Kids to See Through the Marketing Matrix
Youth are saturated with nicotine messaging—ads, influencer content, product placement—on platforms that didn't exist when the advertising bans were written. Media literacy teaches them to recognize, analyze, and resist marketing. It's underfunded and underutilized.
The 'Zynfluencer' on TikTok isn't labeled as an ad. The vape review on YouTube blurs the line between organic content and paid promotion. The advertising restrictions of the 20th century were designed for a media environment that no longer exists. **Media literacy—teaching young people to analyze who created the content, what they're trying to sell, and what techniques they're using—is a defense against the new nicotine marketing. It's evidence-based, developmentally appropriate, and massively underfunded.**
