American anti-tobacco activists have every reason to rejoice: as the Financial Times points out, 13% of adults in the country said they were smokers in 2020, while in the middle of the 20th century, this was the case for almost half of them. But the American media nevertheless evokes a decline with a bitter taste, since the majority of individuals who continue to smoke are part of the most deprived segment of the population.
In 1925, the American magazine Mercury stated about cigarettes that “the banker and his shoeshine boy share the same preferences”. This is no longer the case today: the banker has stopped smoking, because he is better informed about the harms of tobacco and because he has much easier access to methods to quit the habit – including the most expensive ones.
Inequality amplifier
A study carried out in the United States shows, for example, that the smoking rate among the most educated adults began to decline in 1954, shortly after the first articles on the subject appeared in the general press. The problem is not typically American: we can cite the British Ministry of Health, which describes smoking as “the main cause of health inequalities”responsible for half of the life expectancy gap between the most and least well-off communities in England.
The same phenomenon could well occur with regard to social networks, explains the Financial Times: a phase of massive use, common to all categories, could follow a period of clear disparity on the socio-economic level. Campaigns promoting education without smartphones and limiting the time spent in front of screens primarily concern the middle and upper classes, who have more time and experience to try to support their children in their first uses of digital technology.
The parallel is, however, debatable. One of the main determining factors for becoming a smoker is parental smoking, which is not necessarily the case with regard to social networks, of which many parents only make moderate use – when this is not simply non-existent.
But whatever the case, summarizes the Financial Times, the history of the uneven decline of smoking shows that addictive products can persist long after they have lost their popularity and contribute to amplifying social inequalities.
