Teen Girls Now Vape More Than Teen Boys, Study Warns

Teen Girls Now Vape More: that is the headline finding from new research at the Medical University of South Carolina, which shows teenage girls in the United States have overtaken boys in regular vaping, reversing a pattern that held for decades. The study, published as a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics, offers the first full-decade look at how youth nicotine habits shifted from the rapid rise of e-cigarettes in the late twenty-tens to the present day. The finding that teen girls now vape more marks a historic turn: for generations, boys and men were more likely than their female peers to use nicotine, but among American adolescents that gap has now flipped.

Among older teenagers, the shift is stark. Regular vaping among girls ages fifteen to seventeen climbed from just under five percent in twenty twenty-one to nearly eight percent in twenty twenty-four, approaching the peak of the youth vaping surge seen in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, reported by the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. By comparison, fewer than five percent of boys the same age were regular users in twenty twenty-four. Teen Girls Now Vape More across the older teenage years, and the gap is widest there: among younger adolescents ages twelve to fourteen, vaping rates stayed relatively low and bounced around from year to year, but girls still generally had higher rates than boys after twenty twenty-one, even as their numbers eased in the most recent data.

A decade of change, in three acts

The research traces three distinct phases. E-cigarettes exploded in popularity in the late twenty-tens, driving the original youth vaping crisis. Rates then fell through twenty twenty-one, a dip that briefly looked like the problem was fading. But what came next split along gender lines: boys' vaping kept drifting down while girls' use climbed steadily upward, and the gap between them has grown particularly pronounced among older teenagers since twenty twenty-one.

That trajectory is what alarmed the study team. "We have to understand why, and we need to mobilize our public health efforts," said Benjamin Toll, director of the university's tobacco treatment program and co-director of its lung cancer screening program, in the center's announcement. "We need both prevention and intervention for these young people who are vaping at alarmingly high rates." Toll added that the alarm cuts both ways: "We have to sound the alarm bells for girls. But we also need to make sure that we're addressing the boys, too." Naomi Brownstein, a biostatistician at the university and co-first author of the letter, cautioned against reading the most recent dip as good news: "Even though the rate dropped from twenty twenty-three to twenty twenty-four, it's still high. There are still a lot of middle school girls vaping."

Why this generation should pay attention

The concern is not abstract. Regular vaping during the teenage years carries a real risk of nicotine addiction, and modern devices are engineered to make heavy use easy: they are small, easy to conceal, and built to deliver hundreds or even thousands of puffs per cartridge throughout the day. Separate national research has found that adolescents who vape show measurable drops in physical fitness, a reminder that the habit reaches beyond the lungs. For a generation that grew up hearing vaping pitched as the safer alternative to cigarettes, the new numbers show the problem never really went away — it just changed who it hits hardest.

The findings also point to where prevention efforts need to go next. Teen Girls Now Vape More than at any point in the decade the researchers examined, and the gender reversal suggests that the old playbook, built around the idea that boys were the primary at-risk group, no longer matches reality. Researchers say the data make the case for prevention and quitting support designed specifically around how girls start and keep vaping, from social pressures to the flavors and designs that appeal to them. Anyone still assuming youth vaping faded after the twenty nineteen crackdowns should look again: this is a second wave, and it is being led by teenage girls. For more on how everyday habits shape the developing brain, see how a daily handful of peanuts may keep your brain sharp and what a new walking study found about brain health, or read why school phone bans did not lift grades for another look at what actually moves the needle for teens.