When a friend pulled out her vape at a playoff-baseball watch party earlier this month, it immediately caught my eye. I had grown accustomed to marveling at the different disposable vapes she’d purchase each time her last one ran out of nicotine—the strange flavors, the seemingly endless number of brands—but this product was different. It had a screen. While she vaped, the device played a silly little animation that reminded me of a rudimentary version of Pac-Man.
In the name of journalism, I went to my local smoke shop this week, and sure enough, vapes with screens were ubiquitous. One product on the shelves, a Geek Bar Pulse X, featured a screen that wraps around the device, displaying a constellation of stars when you inhale. Another, the Watermelon Ice Raz vape, displayed a basic animation of moving flames. Vapes with screens first began to hit the market late last year, and only recently have become widely accessible. Online retailers sell vapes with screens that display what appear to be planets, rockets, and cars driving in outer space. The screens are small—just a few inches wide at most—and they are cheap: These products run as little as $25, and can last for several months.
The Watermelon Ice Raz vape that I spotted in the store reminded me of the loading screens on an old Game Boy Color. I could see how adults like me might be enticed by the nostalgia of it all. The problem is that these vapes might also appeal to kids. It’s illegal for anyone under 21 to buy a vape, but the gadgets have been popular among teens since they were first popularized by Juul. Although youth vaping rates have dropped in recent years thanks in part to public-service campaigns that have warned kids about the dangers of vaping and nicotine addiction, the inclusion of a screen risks backtracking the progress that has been made. A screen full of animations sends the message that an e-cigarette is “something for fun and games and recreation,” Robert Jackler, an expert on tobacco marketing at Stanford University, told me. Just imagine you’re in eighth grade and the cool kid in your class has a vape with a screen of moving flames. You’re going to want one.
These gadgets are new enough that it’s unclear to what degree kids are using them, but they have all the warning signs. Vape companies are notorious for selling products in kid-friendly flavors such as Banana Taffy Freeze and Cherry Bomb, and screen vapes may be the next ploy to hook kids. The vaping industry “will do anything that it takes to bring in novel features to attract new users, and this is just another example of that,” Laura Struik, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia at Okanagan who has studied youth use of e-cigarettes, told me. One of the most popular vape brands among teens, Mr. Fog, has already launched a screen vape.
Screen vapes run the risk of becoming a fad, and fads spread among kids because someone they look up to uses them, Emily Moorlock, a senior lecturer in marketing at Sheffield Hallam University who has written about youth vaping, told me. That was certainly my experience as a kid. I remember begging my parents for a Game Boy because other kids in my elementary school had them. Vaping is similar: When the government asks kids to explain the reason they tried vaping, the top explanation is that a friend does it.
Screens might also make vapes more addictive. Even the simplest visuals, such as retro video games, have been shown to cause the brain to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure and reward. Even the more rudimentary vapes I encountered—those that just play little animations on a loop—could spike dopamine, and thus increase users’ desire for these products, three experts told me.
Tony Abboud, the head of the Vapor Technology Association, a lobbying group, described them to me as a technological advancement. Besides the animations, many of these screens tend to display how much battery and vapable nicotine juice is left in the device. Abboud said that public-health groups are trying to brand screen vapes as “the next bad example” of how the industry is marketing to kids, despite youth vaping rates dropping. “Just because a new technology has a new feature doesn’t mean that feature was designed to allow the product to be marketed to kids,” he said.
Abboud and other vaping defenders have a point that e-cigarettes aren’t just an enticement for kids to get addicted to nicotine, but are also a tool to help smokers quit smoking. Vapes can benefit public health because they are safer than cigarettes and as effective, or more effective, than other anti-smoking products on the market. Even flavored vapes—which do attract kids—also can help entice adults to switch out their cigarettes for a vape.
But a screen serves no purpose except for some cheap entertainment. If adult vapers want a signal that their product is low on battery, that could be solved by a little power light, like on a smoke detector. The flames and constellations simply aren’t necessary. After years of panic over youth vaping rates, it seems like kids are finally understanding that they shouldn’t vape. Why risk messing that up because of a tiny screen?