We wish to put forward a hypothesis that may provide a new direction for youth anti-smoking campaigns. Our hypothesis is that there is a strong correlation between the fall in youth smoking and the rise of mobile phone ownership among adolescents. The mobile phone is an effective competitor to cigarettes in the market for products that offer teenagers adult style, individuality, sociability, rebellion, peer-group bonding and adult aspiration. Boys and girls smoking weekly at age 15. The advertising message for both cigarettes and mobiles focuses on 'image to myself' and 'my image to others', offering kudos and contact.
Mobile phones are now relatively cheap and available in trendy retail outlets.
It seems that the various highly stylised phone covers provide important badges of individuality and additional features such as simple computer games are also valued. Proffered cigarettes and the use of the mobile phone both provide a means of making contact. Mobile phone use may act as an entry to a peer group and may be essential for membership of a peer group that arranges its social life on the move through the mobile phone. As mobile ownership levels reach a critical threshold, it will start to become integral and essential to teenage social life. Mobile phone use also provides teenagers with something to do with their hands, gives confidence, comfort, relief of boredom, and fulfils social and fun needs in much the same way that smoking does.