Huilin Feng Lu

ENC 1102
09/17/2023

Writing Project 1

Annotated Bibliography

Forsyth, Susan R., Christine Kennedy, and Ruth E. Malone. “The Effect of the Internet on Teen

and Young Adult Tobacco Use: A Literature Review.” Journal of Pediatric Health Care

27, no. 5 (2013): 367-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2012.02.008.

The central argument of this journal article discusses how advertisements and images of

smoking products, such as cigarettes and tobacco, on the internet can have a great impact

on children and teenagers who surf the internet on a regular basis. This is due to their

brains not being fully developed yet. Thus, they are at a higher chance of being at risk to

exposure to these product images, which can potentially increase their curiosity about

smoking. This article believes that the internet is making teenagers want to take the initial

step to take their first hit with smoking, but there are not many studies on this topic. A

table with various types of information on articles that the authors have reviewed and

statistics about the usage of smoking products among young adults were used to support

their argument on how the internet can affect children and teens. Due to the article being

published ten years ago, it is not timely; however, smoking is still one of the major issues

in today’s world, so it is still relevant. I would like to use this article to show how even

though this research was carried out a decade ago, the concern of the topic of smoking

still exists today along with the issue of children and teens using the internet even more

frequently compared to past years.

 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023
Groom, Allison L., Thanh-Huyen T. Vu, Robyn L. Landry, Anshula Kesh, Joy L. Hart, Kandi L.

Walker, Lindsey A. Wood, Rose Marie Robertson, and Thomas J. Payne. “The Influence

of Friends on Teen Vaping: A Mixed-Methods Approach.” International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 13 (2021): 6784-.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136784.

The central argument of this journal article talks about the number of factors that

contribute to youth vaping which include marketing advertisements, family, peers,

friends, internet, and social media, but friends are the main influence. The main reason is

that adolescents usually hang out with their friends and/or peers. Hanging out with

friends, specifically those who are going through their rebellion phase, can put one at a

high risk of coming in contact with vaping in society today since their friends are the

ones who are supplying them with vape pens. The article presented online comments

from teens on vaping and quantitative surveys the researchers collected to do their

analyses. The authors/researchers also included characteristics, such as the types of social

media apps, age groups, and race/ethnicities, that were used or interviewed to collect data

for their research. This article was published in 2021, so it is timely and relevant because

vaping became a popular trend among adolescents and young adults only a few years

before the publication year. I plan on using this article to demonstrate how young

children, teenagers, and young adults can be easily influenced by their peers as many

want to feel included or be seen as one of the “cool” kids. I may also utilize the

characteristics the researchers included in their paper and discuss them in further detail in

my writing paper.
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023

Luke, Douglas, Peg Allen, Gretchen Arian, Myra Crawford, S. Headen, C. Spigner, P. Tassler,

and J. Ureda. “Teens’ Images of Smoking and Smokers.” Public Health Reports 116,

no.1_suppl (2001): 194-202. https://doi.org/10.1093/phr/116.s1.194.

The central argument of this journal article discusses how most teenagers tend to have a

negative mental image of people who smoke. Teen smoking has been a rising issue across

the world. Smokers are often associated with the impression that they are delinquents,

dirty, abusers, depressed, and short-tempered. These assumptions show that among teens,

there is a consistent negative image of the concept of smoking and smokers, even if they

are part of the smoker groups. Tables that include the characteristics of the participant

focus groups, image themes, and descriptive codes as well as the different types of

comments from teens were used as evidence to support the authors’ main idea of the

article. This journal article was published in 2001, more than two decades ago, so it is not

considered to be timely. However, the topic of smokers’ images among teens and other

people is still relevant today. Many teens still view the concept of smoking in a negative

light while non-smokers are viewed in prettier and more positive light. I would like to

incorporate the data and findings from this research and their analyses in my writing

paper because it illustrates the fact that even after more than twenty years since this

journal article was published, smoking is still associated with negativity. There might be

some outdated information in the research paper, but there is still some useful

information I may be able to use to compare the way teens thought about smoking back

then and in today’s society.

 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023

May, Brandon. “As Vaping Among Teens, Young Adults Rapidly Increases, So Do Health

Concerns.” Pulmonology Advisor, August 4, 2023.

https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/home/topics/smoking/as-vaping-among-teens-

young-adults-increases-so-do-health-concerns/.

The central argument of this article talks about how the use of vaping among adolescents

is growing rapidly because of the Electronic Nicotine-Delivery Systems (ENDS). E-

cigarettes and vape pens are devices that use batteries to function properly and contain

nicotine and various flavors that can cause one to become addicted to them quickly.

Vaping started becoming more popular in recent years, so not many studies have been

conducted yet, but there is growing evidence that shows how vaping can still potentially

harm one’s body, such as impaired blood vessel relaxation. Advertisements are spreading

misleading concepts of vaping to adolescents; hence it is why they fall into the nicotine

addiction trap so easily. The author used past research studies’ statistics on e-cigarette

usage, a quotation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2020 data

brief, information from the American Lung Association, and citing different experts such

as Steven Fu, MD, MSCE and Hilary Tindle, MD, MPH to support his article on vaping

and its effects. This article is timely since it was published on August 4, 2023, which is a

little over a month ago, and it is relevant because many adolescents are still vaping

everywhere around the world. However, this article might not be the most credible since

it has not been peer-reviewed yet. I would like to use this article to illustrate the fact that

nicotine addiction is a real thing, and we need to address this issue more often.
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023

Watson, N. A., J. P. Clarkson, R. J. Donovan, and B. Giles-Corti. “Filthy or Fashionable? Young

People’s Perceptions of Smoking in the Media.” Health Education Research 18, no. 5

(2003): 554-67. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyf039.

The central argument of this journal article discusses the role that media plays among

young teenagers, and how they perceive the concept of smoking. Many young people

view smoking as a normal, accepting, and understanding thing to do because they know

where smokers are coming from. They believe that many smokers mainly smoke due to

the amount of stress they might have to fit into their social groups. Smoking can help

relax one’s nerves and be perceived as “cool” by their peers. Since the youth culture

seems to view smoking as a normal, socially accepted behavior, they are also

encouraging the act of smoking even further because they are not showing a negative

attitude towards it. It allows smokers and potential smokers to smoke more freely without

having to worry about how others perceive them. The authors presented the focus group

studies they conducted, a table with semantic scales with their respective thematic

categories, another table with proportions of different responses, and comments made by

the teen participants of the research study. This article was published in October 2003, so

it is not timely considering that was almost 20 years ago. However, the perception that

young people have on smoking is still a relevant topic today because people still do it as

well as trying to fit into their peers’ groups. I would like to use the information from this

article to talk about how even after 20 years since this research was conducted, the youth

culture still thinks similarly regarding smoking and the reasons why people do so.
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023

Research Proposal

The objective of my research is to show how adolescents and young adults are the most

vulnerable to the concept of smoking. Their minds can be easily influenced by many factors,

which include peers, peer pressure, and social media. Smoking has been around for a long time,

and it is still going around in the world today. People have been smoking different products such

as cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, opium, and bidis for centuries. However, in recent years, many

people have emerged and started vaping instead. Vaping has become appealing to them because

of the nicotine in their vape devices and different brands of vape pens contain various types of

flavors for them to choose from, which fuel their addiction even further. The topic of smoking is

important to me because for as long as I remember, my dad has always been smoking and he’s

been smoking for decades now. He first started smoking back when he was still a teenager,

maybe around 15 or 16 years old, and now he is in his early 50s. Everyone around him, including

myself, has tried to convince him to stop smoking or try an alternative, such as chewing gum or

eating sugar-free candies, for him to stop smoking before his physical health gets even worse

than it is right now. Another reason why I chose this topic is that many teenagers that I know

personally and know of are also victims of vaping; a majority of them have shared their stories of

how vaping is addicting, how it helps them to relieve their stress, and how they started vaping

due to them hanging out with peers. With my exigence being smoking (and vaping), I believe

others should care about the rising issue of smoking because smokers are putting people around

them at risk too. Some smokers might not know this, but when they are smoking, they are also

exposing secondhand smoke to everyone around them. Too much exposure to secondhand smoke
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023
can also cause different types of health problems, such as cardiovascular diseases (i.e. high blood

pressure and heart attack) and respiratory diseases (i.e. asthma and bronchitis). Some smokers do

know this fact, but they are choosing to ignore it and refuse to acknowledge it because they want

their own relief. The topic of smoking calls for our attention because actual smoking among

adolescents is not as popular anymore; however, vaping, on the other hand, is a whole different

story. Vape companies have been promoting their products with misleading facts and beliefs,

such as how they are way less harmful compared to actual smoking, to attract the youth culture.

They are failing to mention the number of long-term effects vaping can have on one’s body like

how they can often have a dry mouth, develop a severe nicotine addiction, increased mood

disorders, and have lung damage. Most teens do not seem to care about the consequences of

vaping (or smoking) as of now since they are still young, hence it is why we need to have this

discussion and bring more attention to this exigence.

Online communities and spaces that I will most likely be examining are Reddit

communities, TikTok comments, and maybe tweets from X (previously known as Twitter). I

have not looked into the apps’ spaces so far, but I will be getting to it shortly. However, in the

past, I have seen quite a few videos on smoking and vaping on TikTok as I was scrolling through

my ‘for you’ page before. It would be like a one to five-minutes video of the creator of the

account explaining why smoking or vaping is bad for your health as well as listing the effects

they can have on one’s body. With TikTok comments and tweets from X, I believe there will be a

few restraints because there are character limits on those two social apps. Therefore, I will have

to narrow down my research and look for specific comments or tweets that might be relevant to

what I want to write about depending on what the users have typed. With Reddit, it may be a

little bit easier for me to search subreddits, such as r/smoking or r/vaping, to find more users
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023
talking about this subject in the hopes of unbiased points of view. All three of these social

platforms are free, they allow users to post most of what they want and if they want to, they can

create more than one account. Restrictions that these three apps have in common are their

community and violation guidelines; if their posts break one or more rules from their app’s

policy, then their accounts might be potentially suspended or banned.

Currently, I have four academic journal articles and one nonacademic article. The four

academic articles have been peer-reviewed while the one nonacademic article is not peer-

reviewed. I believe I still need to find another nonacademic article to semi-balance out the five

articles that I currently have so far; I want to have a total of four peer-reviewed articles and two

nonacademic articles that have not been peer-reviewed yet. Of the articles that I have right now,

each one of them is insightful in its own way and provides information that I would like to

incorporate into my own writing paper. Since the articles have a specific viewpoint that they

decided to conduct their research on, I can borrow their point of view to look for comments and

discussion posts about them. For example, one of my articles specifically mentioned how friends

are the main influence on vaping in social groups in today’s world, I can try to look for videos,

comments, threads, or posts about teens explaining how they started vaping and if their friends

were the ones who influenced them to try taking their first hit.

With the topic of my writing paper being smoking, I already know some facts about how

it can affect one’s health because I have witnessed the effects firsthand from someone close to

me. Nevertheless, I would like to further research more about it. One concern I have about this

paper is thinking of a title for this research proposal since I want to make a cover page for it.

However, the main concern I have is that I am still not very sure if my exigence is good enough
 Huilin Feng Lu
ENC 1102
09/17/2023
or if I have to tweak it a little bit for it to be more fitting. I know what I want to write about, but I

am not sure if the exigence that I proposed is the right way to word it.