Warm sunlight filters through the thin curtains of the Italian villa where Arden* is staying. As he groggily wakes up, a pounding headache reminds him of the drunken events of the night before. Moments later, he feels a throbbing pain in his upper arm. Desperate to find the source of his pain, Arden turns over to find an angry blister, the result of a cigarette burn. Arden said he convinced his friend to put out a cigarette on his arm in an effort to be perceived as more daring.
“Cigarettes are a very performative thing, and there is a certain aura to people who chase after them,” Arden said. “During my peak performative era, on a trip to Italy, I was really drunk, so I told my friend to put a cigarette on my arm, thinking it would be cool. Even though she didn’t want to do it, she did and I felt nothing. I thought it did not work.”
Arden is a part of Generation Z’s greater shift towards smoking cigarettes. From April 2023 to April 2024, cigarette brands saw rising sales, with average customer spending reaching $326, up 27% from the previous year, according to The Outcome. According to a Chronicle poll, 21% of students have used cigarettes themselves and 38.6% of students know someone who smokes cigarettes regularly. Chloe Min ’27 said cigarettes have reemerged as a trendier nicotine product due to the over-popularization of vaping.
“At first, everyone steered away from smoking cigarettes because of the introduction of the vape in the early 2010s with the Juul pod,” Min said. “The vape became a cultural symbol and a point of community. It became so popular that everyone was doing it. When things get overpopularized, they start to become uncool. That happened exactly with the vape. It became corny, so people reverted back to the cigarette. With TikTok, the cigarette has become so much bigger and part of people’s identity.”
Kenzie Lane ’27 said cigarettes have been deemed more fashionable than vapes, leading to an increase in popularity.
“There is a weird thing, probably because of social media, where smoking is seen as chic and more aesthetic than vaping,” Lane said. “A lot of kids are still more addicted to vaping, but vapes are not seen as new or cool anymore, which might explain why more kids are smoking cigarettes at parties.”
Westflix Director of Operations Eze Baum ’26 said the rise of weight loss drugs and a renewed push toward ultra-thin body standards has increased smoking in efforts to meet these standards.
“Ozempic, GLP-1s and a desire to be thin are definitely contributing,” Baum said. “Fashion and body standards have shifted back to where they were in the ’90s and early 2000s, where size zero was ideal and people were smoking and not eating, and we’re seeing more of that again.”
Reagan Shibuya ’27 said with so many nicotine alternatives available, choosing cigarettes feels more deliberate and tied to a revival of older trends.
“Gen Z smoking cigarettes is different from other generations because there are so many other ways to smoke, so smoking cigarettes is a callback to tradition,” Shibuya said. “Everything in our culture is borrowing from ’90s and 2000s fashion, and smoking cigarettes is an extension of that.”
Eight of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars contain tobacco imagery, many of which feature young stars, according to the Truth Initiative. Baum points to “Love Story,” a sensationalized television show, where the main character frequently smokes. Baum said the revival of older trends in media has led to the glamorization of cigarettes.
“Over the past few years, we have definitely seen an overall ’90s nostalgia resurgence that coincides with all of the other nostalgia-based trends that have been popping up and defining the 2020s,” Baum said. “Part of that is smoking culture. For example, ‘Love Story’ has contributed to people wanting to dress like JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and feel part of that world, but part of that world was smoking. It shows up in movies and TV, whether period pieces or contemporary settings, and in moments like Charli XCX having cigarettes on platters at her after-party and handing them out as party favors.”
Jared Oviatt, who runs @cigfluencers, an Instagram account with nearly 100,000 followers that features celebrities smoking, points to musical artist Charli XCX as a cigarette symbol for Gen Z. Charli is best known for “Brat Summer,” a chaotic, messy summer inspired by the release of her popular album Brat. Oviatt said Charli XCX contributed to cigarettes’ increase in popularity and has become the symbol of rebellion for younger generations.
“With Brat Summer, Charli was obviously shedding that mainstream pop star status to ‘365 party girl,’ for lack of a better word,” Oviatt said. “That’s Gen Z’s point of reference for a messy celebrity. I’m older Gen Z, but especially for Gen Alpha, there’s no Paris Hilton to look up to. It is Charli XCX. I like to attribute a lot of [smoking culture] to Charli, and it extends off her into a whole web of influence in terms of cigarettes.”
In a similar fashion, Min said Lana Del Rey, another popular female artist, has been instrumental in popularizing cigarettes.
“Lana Del Rey loves her geek bar and famously loves her vape, but also a big part of her brand was a cigarette,” Min said. “She sang about it in several of her songs and turned it into a symbol of love. It was such a big image in so many of her songs. Lana Del Rey’s influence single-handedly brought so many young girls into smoking because they associated it with this beautiful, Americana image.”
Lana Del Rey, Charli XCX and similar female artists have impacted their listeners. In recent years, the gap between women and men who smoke cigarettes has shrunk significantly, according to the American Lung Association. Furthermore, girls’ increased social media usage and cigarette usage have been linked. Girls who used social media seven or more hours a day were 5.83 times more likely to smoke than girls who used none at all. For boys, that number was notably lower at 4.80. Across all social media platforms, girls showed a stronger link between screen time and smoking than boys did, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Oviatt said he has noticed more women engaging with smoking content on social media.
“70% of the followers on this account are women,” Oviatt said. “My friends who are women are doing things for Instagram, whereas I haven’t taken a photo in three weeks on my phone. It’s this idea that people are doing something for the sake of doing it, rather than doing it to be perceived a certain way.”
On social media, the amount of smoking-related content has also increased. In 2025, Pinterest searches for “smoking pose” were up 70% year-over-year among 18 to 24-year-olds in the U.S., according to YPulse. Shibuya said social media has created an archetype that romanticizes girls smoking.
“More girls are smoking now because it is attached to the Tumblr ‘cool-girl’ persona,” Shibuya said. “A cool girl would not be seen holding a vape; she would be smoking a cigarette. Social media and TV both aestheticize it. People are posting themselves smoking, and there are lots of aesthetic videos of girls smoking cigarettes.”
Oviatt said newer generations’ smoking habits are primarily motivated by social media.
“At least it seems like people are doing it purely for Instagram as opposed to something that they’re doing on a day-to-day,” Oviatt said. “This generation of smoking is a little different in terms of the habit side of things. People are not addicted to cigarettes. They’re making a conscious decision to smoke to be perceived a certain sort of way.”
*Names have been changed.
