Currently, more than 2.5 million high school and middle school students use some kind of vape product. Most teens try to find a way to escape their lives, so they start to vape. Social media has a big role in teenagers’ lives. It can have such a negative impact on young people’s mental health when they use it wrong. That’s when a vape addiction can start.
Social media
At some point in your life, you’re going to be in front of a screen. You might be viewing your friend’s prom picture or watching a funny video on YouTube. The lists are endless. What if you took it all away? Social media just suddenly disappears, would you be sad, happy, angry. Most teens would most likely be mad, I would be mad to be honest. But much it would help? Without social media you don’t have to live up to everyone’s expectations. You wouldn’t have those late nights when you’re up all night wishing you were someone else.
Most teens find themselves scrolling on TikTok. The more they are trapped under the addiction of their screens, the more depressed teens get. This is where vaping comes in. When you’re depressed and don’t know how to find your way out, or think no one actually cares about you, you turn to something you find comfort in.
Vaping works like cigarettes, you take one or two puffs and it makes you feel happy, it gives your body dopamine. Then after a little bit your dopamine runs out and you vape more. It gets to the point where your body can’t make its own dopamine because your body thinks you’re getting enough from your vape. So your body stops making dopamine so you feel trapped and sad.
There’s a really good video that helps portray addiction. It’s called “Nuggets” by Filmbilder and Friends. It starts where a duck named Kiwi takes a gold nugget substance. He feels so happy, he feels like he’s floating. The more he takes the gold stuff though, the more it gets dark around him, and the more he cant get back up and the more he feels like he’s trapped.
“Nuggets by filmbilder and friends”
The industry is fricked. It’s so easy for teens to get cigarettes, vapes, or just any kind of addictive product. Nowadays there’s kids who sell them at school, or buy them at a store with a fake id. The companies are targeting kids like me and you. All the colors make them look pretty. How easy they are to get, or how they make them disposable and disguise them as highlights, markers, and stuffed toys.
Why are they doing this?
Vaping as an adult isn’t illegal, but they’re not targeting the adults, they’re targeting the teens. The industries disguise them as something else so you won’t get in trouble and you can keep buying. They make them disposable so if you’re in trouble you can just throw your vape away. The industries say they’re trying to fix things, but they’re not, they’re making it worse. Same goes with Instagram and any other social media.
They say you have to be thirteen, but it’s so easy to lie about your age, for heaven’s sake, I lied about my age a few years ago. They say they take them down, but why am I not down yet? There’s nine year olds thinking they are talking to other nine year olds. But in reality its old people who want to hurt them. The same goes with teenagers who talk to strangers. One slip up and you can get kidnapped or blackmailed.
This can all relate back to where you started. The first page on your Instagram. The constant scrolling, the constant hours spent on your device trying to be someone you don’t even know, till you break. When you feel like know one cares about you, except your little device that you always keep in your pocket.
