Ali Caulkins
Social Psych
Prof Gosnell
November 8, 2018
Everyone wants to fit in, do what everyone else is doing, even when there are risks. Juuling became popular this past year and it seems almost everyone is doing it. They have advertisements for Juuls that make them seem very cool, with very colorful backgrounds and teenagers smoking them, saying things like “Friends don’t let friends buy cigarettes” and making it seem like it’s the cool thing to do. Conforming is when a bunch of people are doing something and one person isn’t, but the one person doesn’t want to feel left out so they change as much as necessary so they can fit in. Many people are guilty to conforming to the group that juuls or vapes. In 2016 there was a flag by US surgeon general with a 900% increase use of vaping in any form.
When people see that ‘everyone is doing it’, they get blindsided to the possible effects to it, thinking ‘it won’t happen to me’, which is called group polarization. When people are in a group and everyone has the same mindset such as ‘juuling is cool’, it gets extreme, to the point where even if you’ve never smoked a cigarette a day in your life, you’ll end up buying a juul because everyone has one. Even though they aren’t cigarettes they’re still very bad for you and Juul company doesn’t make that clear in their ads. When it’s such a large group doing it individuals feel more anonymous, so they feel more inclined to do things out of the ordinary for them, like smoking Juul.
Juul company is starting to get a lot of backlash for selling flavors that mostly appeal to teens like mango and fruit medley. They’re trying to implement an anti-vaping program to schools by offering them thousands of dollars, but quickly took back their offers because of the reactions of the health and education advocates, saything their program completely misses crucial information for a genuine prevention effort.
Nedelman, Michael. “How Juul’s Plan to Teach Students about Vaping Went up in Smoke.” CNN, Cable News Network, 3 Nov. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/health/juul-vape-school-curriculum/index.html.