Like a cloud of second-hand smoke, there’s a lingering vibe that Generation Z is getting into cigarettes.
Images of Gen Z icons such as Rosalía or Charli XCX lighting up (or even the former presenting the other with a cigarette bouquet) and anecdotes of nihilistic teens vaping abound. But if Gen Zers are smoking more (big “if”), then why are they doing it? Don’t they know it’s bad for them? (They do—but that’s not the point.)
What certainly seems to be true is that, after years of decline in movies and TV, images of smoking have crept up in recent years, says Dan Romer, who researches risky social behavior among adolescents at the University of Pennsylvania. Of the top 152 movies at the box office released in 2024, tobacco imagery was present in 77—up from 58 out of 141 the year before, according to the antinicotine group Truth Initiative. Smoking was present in some form in 34 percent of movies with G, PG or PG-13 ratings, the group found. That’s a stark reversal, Romer says.
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Interestingly, smokers in movies and TV shows today seem to mirror smokers on screens gone by. They “tend to be sort of antisocial rebels,” Romer says. “Hollywood is not afraid, it seems, of showing people smoking, especially if it fits their characters.”
The trend isn’t confined to traditional media, of course. Instagram, TikTok and Twitch influencers are also increasingly lighting up cigarettes.
That’s despite many social media sites having policies against promoting tobacco—but that typically extends only to paid posts. TikTok, for example, does not allow “trading, marketing, or providing access” to tobacco products. Instagram won’t necessarily ban or crack down on an ordinary user posting photos of themselves smoking, but it has rules against users getting paid to promote tobacco products.
As a result, members of Gen Z likely see more content that makes smoking look cool. One Instagram account dedicated to “cigfluencers” features photos of celebrities such as Supergirl star Milly Alcock, The Batman star Robert Pattinson and Heated Rivalry lead Connor Storrie lighting up. It has more than 100,000 followers. On Pinterest, searches for the term “smoking pose” rose 70 percent year over year among American 18- to 24-year-olds, according to fashion data firm Style Analytics.
Melissa Little, an associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, says kids might be aiming for “the idea of the whole Lana Del Rey vibe” and also cites Sabrina Carpenter as a potential influence.
“I feel like they have this glamorizing smoking coquette esthetic,” she says.
Vibe or not, the data aren’t keeping up. The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures tracking smoking in young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 date to 2022—then around 5 percent of that group reported smoking cigarettes. That suggested elder Gen Zers were the least likely adults to smoke in the U.S. Younger Gen Zers were even less likely to smoke cigarettes, according to a 2024 CDC survey—only one in 91 said they had smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days.
“The national data currently is showing that that levels among the younger age group either continue to be stable or are declining,” says Sherry McKee, director of the Yale Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory. “But what you don’t know is whether this imagery is slowing down or starting to reverse a decline.”
Researchers, meanwhile, are playing catch up.
“I actually told my team, ‘Guys, we gotta get on this,’” Little says. “‘We gotta figure out why Gen Z is smoking, because I’m getting asked this, and I need my own data to back it up.’”
There are early signs of an uptick. A 2025 Truth Initiative survey found that the number of 12th graders—kids aged 17 to 18—who use any tobacco products rose from 17 percent in 2024 to 21.8 percent last year. And in the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the percentage of people aged 12 or older who began smoking cigarettes rose from 0.4 percent in 2021 to 0.6 percent in 2025. Among young adults aged 18 to 25, the rise was even steeper: 2.2 percent to 3.2 percent.
“I think that’s probably the biggest indicator” that a broader rise in tobacco use will soon become apparent in the data, Little says. “We also know that a lot of the kids using e-cigarettes are also using other tobacco products, including cigarettes. I think that’s pretty telling.”
However popular smoking is in general, the more popular it tends to be with young people, Romer says. Gen Z is no different from past generations.
“It’s the cool factor,” he says. “Back when I was young, it was cool to smoke, and that persisted. The e-cigarette craze was: the cool kids were using it. And that’s pretty much the story, I think.”
Coolness may not be the only factor at play with Gen Zers, however. They are bearing the brunt of the loneliness epidemic. And smoke breaks are often a group activity. McKee notes that many former smokers say they miss the social interaction of these informal gatherings.
“You’re missing out on those social interactions, so smokers do acknowledge that as a perceived loss,” she says. Perhaps Gen Z similarly sees smoking as a chance to connect.
More bleakly, it would make sense for Gen Zers to simply care less about their health than previous generations. The kids who grew up in the wake of 9/11 have lived through multiple economic crises, spent their lives living with the knowledge and effects of climate change, had to go through the COVID pandemic during a formative part of their lives and are now entering a job market that could be permanently disrupted by artificial intelligence. Who could blame them for a little nihilistic hedonism?
And yet, by and large, the data we have suggest members of this generation tend to engage in less risky behavior than their elders: another (old, 2023) CDC survey found they are having less sex, both overall and with fewer partners, and are drinking less alcohol.
It’s a strange paradox, Little acknowledges, and one that requires more study to reconcile.
“Gen Z is one of the most health-focused groups of generations we’ve ever had,” she says. “They care about eating organically and what they put into their bodies, and more of them don’t drink than ever before. Yet they’re willing to smoke a cigarette, and so those two things are so contradictory in my mind.”
