Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

I don’t need to spew a bunch of statistics to convince you that people don’t smoke like they used to. Because while it’s true that the unhealthy habit saw a steady decline once the public became widely aware of the dangers of cigarette smoke in the 1960s, it’s also true that we had a definitive vibe shift. I was born in ‘92 so I’m just old enough to remember the days of smoking sections in restaurants, and now it shocks my sensibilities to see someone lighting up in an outdoor dining area. Which is how it should be, because smoking is really bad for you. It can cause numerous cancers, potentially fatal lung disease, and heart failure, to name just the real heavy hitters. It’s also associated with increased risk of autoimmune disease, type 2 diabetes and erectile dysfunction—and the list goes on and on.

But while the data we have on smoking in the U.S. still shows the low rates one would expect for an activity that we know is really really bad for us, the vibes have shifted again. Many have noticed that young folks on social media are glamorizing cigarettes, and some experts suspect that public health data just hasn’t caught up to show a new smoking surge.

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Here to tell us more is Adam Kovac, a breaking news reporter here at Scientific American. Adam, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us.

Adam Kovac: Uh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Feltman: I do wanna make sure we define for our listeners what Gen Z actually is, lest we, you know, repeat the sins of our forebears and just use that to mean “young person” for the next 15 years. Who are Gen Z? Who are they? [Laughs.]

Kovac: Well, as a millennial, I definitely feel that pain. So Gen Z is technically anybody born between the years 1997 and 2012. So it’s not kids anymore. These are people who are entering the workforce; they’re older teenagers; they’re young adults. So that’s who Gen Z actually is.

Feltman: So tell me about the genesis of the article. You know, what are people saying about Gen Z and cigarettes?

Kovac: So the genesis of this article is a little bit weird for Scientific American, where we do so much stuff that’s based off of data and having, you know, really concrete, provable things in front of us. This is really more of a vibe. There’s just, like, a sense in the air that’s ...

Feltman: What’s more Gen Z than there just being a vibe, you know?

Kovac: Exactly, exactly. It’s a vibe shift, I think is the term, although I think I might’ve just dated myself there. It’s something that is, like cigarette smoke, up in the air.

There’s just a sense that a lot of Gen Z celebrities are being photographed smoking. If you walk outside of bars, you know, you’ll see a huddle of young adults all kind of lighting up. It’s something that, like, I feel like I would’ve seen when I was younger and then disappeared for a long time, and it—now it’s making this big comeback.

Feltman: Hmm. So what does the data on smoking actually say, you know, once you started poking at it?

Kovac: When I actually started looking at the data, smoking has been on a really steady decline for about half a century now. You know, ever since they started putting warning labels on cigarette packages and really getting the word out about all the negative health effects that cigarettes can have—the lung cancer, the emphysema, the asthma—it really reduced. Like, so it used to be about 50 percent of American adults were smokers, and that number has just been steadily declining for decades. And in most recent surveys, it’s somewhere around 10 percent of Americans are smokers now. So it’s really at historic lows.

Feltman: Do we know anything about Gen Z specifically? You know, are they also, you know, showing those low, steady decline smoking rates in the data?

Kovac: So actually, it shows that the decline is even steeper with them. Depending on the survey that you look at only around 5 percent of Gen Z say that they’ve smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days. So it’s really, really low numbers when you look at the data.

Feltman: So my understanding is that the story isn’t “the vibe seems to be that Gen Z is smoking, but it turns out they’re not.” The experts you talked to were not reassured by that data. Can you tell us a little bit about why?

Kovac: So this kind of data usually comes in at a bit of a lag. So a lot of them are very alarmed by what they’re seeing, particularly because, you know, you can kind of quantify a vibe a little bit. There’s a lot of data showing that images of smoking in popular culture are on the rise. It used to be for several years, you know, if you saw somebody smoking in a movie or a TV show, that was the exception, not the rule.

You know, as somebody who watches The Bear and who loved Oppenheimer, you know, there’s a lot of smoking in a lot of popular culture right now. So they’re really alarmed by that. And Gen Z doesn’t necessarily watch a lot of movies or a lot of TV. They get a lot of their media consumption through TikTok, through Twitch and through Instagram, and there’s actually a lot of accounts on there that are kind of oriented toward that. I found one on Instagram that’s called Cigfluencers that has 100,000 followers, and it’s just pictures of celebrities and young, attractive people looking really cool holding cigarettes.

Feltman: It’s so unfortunate that it is true that, like, smoking can look really cool. I’m not surprised that influencers have taken advantage of that. It’s one of the biggest public health tragedies of our time that smoking does look cool. Unfortunately, [it’s] very uncool for your lungs and the rest of your body.

Kovac: Exactly. I mean, like, James Dean is James Dean for a reason. So, you know, it’s not because he looked like a dork while he was chain-smoking. And he died young, although not from smoking, so go figure.

Feltman: Well, and we should also, I think, take a beat to clarify. We are talking about cigarette smoking, you know, old-school cigarettes, not vaping. Did the experts you talked to have any thoughts on, on sort of the interplay there? And I recall that we were very alarmed a few years ago about how much Gen Z was vaping. So does it seem like they are switching from electronic cigarettes and vapes to regular cigarettes?

Kovac: So that’s not really clear yet, but what is clear is that people who vape do tend to also use other tobacco products, including cigarettes. So it’s not so much that they’re replacing one with the other; it’s kind of, you know, using multiple products at once. A lot of Gen Z are using those tobacco pouches that you kind of put in your mouth. Like I said, you know, the, the data’s just not in yet on how this is kind of emerging because these trends move so fast.

Feltman: Yeah. And so it sounds like that the experts you talk to, you know, while the data hasn’t caught up, they are also picking up on these vibes and even, you know, studying them and, and trying to quantify them. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what their concerns are.

Kovac: Their concerns are that this is something that is coming, it’s coming fast, and the health impacts aren’t felt right away. You know, this is something that lags by decades sometimes. So it’s not like, you know, youth start picking up smoking, and then we see an increase right away in lung cancer rates or anything like that. We’re only gonna be feeling the impacts of that 30, 40, 50 years from now. So that’s, that’s what’s really scary, I think.

Feltman: So, you know, based on what experts are telling us, it does seem reasonable to think this data is lagging, and this is a problem. We don’t know the scale of it yet, but it does seem like it’s a growing problem. So do experts have any thoughts on why this is happening? You know, where did we go wrong? We were supposed to have convinced everybody that smoking was really bad, ’cause it is.

Kovac: So that’s something I’ve really been trying to figure out, is “Why do people start smoking in the first place?” We know why they keep smoking: it’s because it’s wildly addictive. But why pick up that first cigarette? And the answer is pretty much what you’d expect. You know, you’re influenced by your surroundings. If your parents smoke, you’re more likely to start smoking. If your friends smoke, you’re more likely to start smoking. If you’re inundated with images of celebrities smoking, you’re more likely to start smoking. And so they’re really concerned about that, but they’re also concerned, you know, Gen Z has been through so much. They have grown up ...

Feltman: I was gonna say, it’s a stressful place. Far be it from me to judge anybody’s coping mechanisms in times such as these.

Kovac: Yeah, I mean, like, this is a generation that grew up in the shadows of 9/11. They lived through the financial crisis of 2008. [They’ve] lived through all this concern about climate change. They lived through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that, you know, nothing has ever been stable for them. Now with AI, they don’t know if it’s coming for their jobs. If they’re just graduating college, are they gonna be able to get their first job? It’s all really stressful and uncertain. So, you know, maybe they’re hearing that cigarettes are a good way to kind of cope with anxiety, and there’s even, like, a little bit of a, kind of a generational nihilism—like, you know, “The world’s not gonna exist when I’m grown up, so smoke ’em if you got ’em” kind of thing.

Feltman: Right. Yeah. Well, and in terms of this being, you know, kind of a generational shift, what do experts think about the social aspect of smoking and how that’s impacting this?

Kovac: Well, so there’s a lot of data showing that Gen Z reports higher rates of loneliness, higher than previous generations. You know, they can be really cut off, a lot of them only get their socializing online, you know, playing video games, stuff like that. And what’s more social than going out for a smoke break? You know, hanging out with other people for five minutes. You chat, you make a real human connection. They’re your best friend for five minutes. It’s a real way to cut down on loneliness, and I say this as a former smoker myself, you know? Some of the best conversations I ever had were outside of a bar, with somebody whose name I can’t remember and who I never saw again, but we just had that real human-to-human interaction, even if it was brief.

Feltman: So a lot of systemic issues at play that we really should be working on trying to fix and that are not the responsibilities of the public health experts working on smoking cessation. But what do those experts think we can do to curb this? Because, you know, the health impacts that people are gonna face are very real and serious.

Kovac: I mean, you gotta keep getting the word out about how bad this is for you. Put pressure on whoever’s making decisions to get smoking out of pop culture. A lot of social media sites do technically have some policies pertaining to tobacco use, but it seems they’re rarely enforced. So, really, just talking to the people who are in charge and letting them know, “This is an issue. This is something that you can have some power over, and the health of a lot of people really can depend on it. So maybe some action can be taken.”

Feltman: We have to be meaner to Timothée Chalamet. It’s time.

Kovac: I mean, I didn’t see the Ping-Pong movie, but I would bully him just because of how many commercials I had to sit through for that movie.

Feltman: [Laughs.] Well, Adam, thank you so much for coming on talking about this and for, you know, reporting on, this very, very troubling vibe shift that hopefully we can shift in a different direction.

Kovac: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Rachel.

Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. If you’re looking to quit smoking and need support, check out smokefree.gov for resources. We’ll be back on Monday with our weekly science news roundup.

Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!