Vaping More Popular Among Teen Girls Than Boys, Study Finds

TUESDAY, Oct. 20, 2026 (HealthDay News) — You’ve come a long way, baby.

Teenage girls won’t get the reference to that decades-old cigarette ad, but they’ve embraced the same attitude when it comes to vaping, a new study says.

Girls have been vaping at higher rates than boys since 2021, researchers reported Oct. 19 in JAMA Pediatrics.

This is a profound reversal, as for decades boys and men have been more likely than girls and women to use nicotine products, researchers said.

Among 15- to 17-year-olds, regular vaping consistently climbed, from nearly 5% of girls in 2021 to just under 8% in 2024, the study found.

By comparison, only 4.6% of boys regularly vaped in 2024, researchers found.

“We have to understand why, and we need to mobilize our public health efforts,” senior researcher Benjamin Toll said in a news release. He’s director of the Medical University of South Carolina Health Tobacco Treatment Program.

“We need both prevention and intervention for these young people who are vaping at alarmingly high rates,” Toll said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data from the federal Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study, which has been tracking tobacco and nicotine use in the United States since 2013.

The researchers’ analysis included 12- to 17-year-olds and data from 2014 to 2024, focusing on teens who reported vaping regularly within the past 30 days.

“That makes this a pretty conservative estimate of use,” lead researcher Brandon Sanford, an assistant professor of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, said in a news release. “These aren’t youth who simply tried vaping once or twice. We’re talking about adolescents who are regularly using e-cigarettes now.”

Results showed more boys vaping than girls from 2014 through 2018, followed by a dramatic surge in youth vaping in 2018 and 2019 when girls overtook the boys. The gender gap first disappeared, and then reversed. From 2021 onward, girls have been leading in vaping. 

The surge coincided with a new generation of vaping products that used nicotine salts and featured discreet and stylish pod-based designs, researchers said.

“We have to sound the alarm bells for girls,” Toll said. “But we also need to make sure that we’re addressing the boys, too.”

There was some good news — among both boys and girls, traditional cigarette smoking has declined to fewer than half of 1%. Toll called that a “massive public health win.”

Some of the increase in vaping among teens likely comes from cigarette smokers who’ve taken up e-cigarettes, Sanford said.

Vape devices expose users to fewer toxins and carcinogens, but are not necessarily harmless, researchers said.

In addition, nicotine can affect teens’ developing brains, increasing risk of future addiction, researchers said.

The data could not show what is driving the increase in vaping among girls, researchers said. Understanding this shift is one of the most important next questions.

“We would love to look into some of the whys,” he said. “Are there shifts in motivation to use, marketing, social influences or perceptions?”

More information

The American Lung Association has more on cigarettes and vaping among teens.

SOURCE: Medical University of South Carolina, news release, Oct. 19, 2026