We like to believe that we are living in a smart world that is inhabited by smart people who use the smartest technology ever … like, ever! Even though we can sometimes doubt the credibility of the first two statements, but the credibility of the third one might not be at stake for the time being. So when did technology revolutionize our lives? There was a time when teens used to puff on cigarettes to meet the ‘cool’ standards of their time, until one day, along came the internet and smartphones. Suddenly, teenagers started puffing on cigarettes and huffing on their smartphone screen (obviously to clean it) to meet the cool standards of a new era. Now that the connection between smoking and smartphones has been successfully established, let's discuss how smartphones can play an instrumental role to help stop smoking culture among teens.

The daily text

A large number of articles floating around the internet provide shocking stats about the rise in the numbers of teenagers smoking cigarettes and other smoky things. Here we will not discuss statistics but rather talk about an initiative launched by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to help kids shun the cancer sticks forever. Now, the NCI was equally alarmed with the situation and decided to design a smartphone app that sends motivational texts to help teenagers quit smoking.

Erik Augustson of the NCI’s Tobacco Control Research Branch says that teens might not necessarily respond to conventional quit-smoking messages and the program was developed to address this problem.

The program, called SmokefreeTXT, has been designed such that teens have to choose a quit date. The program communicates with teens on a daily basis. In addition, it also responds to texts sent in by teens with advice, encouragement, and sharing valuable tips to help the teens overcome their cravings.

Designed to subdue cravings

One such text reads as follows: “Smoking 1 may seem like the answer but you know it’s not. Stay strong! Cravings fade even without smoking & you’ll be proud for staying focused.” The program lasts for around eight weeks and the messages are created to cater specifically to the kinds of mood swings that teens experience after quitting the habit of smoking.

Successful much

According to Augustson, about 500 teenagers are enrolling each week for the program. He said that teens were 12 percent more likely to quit smoking after one month accompanied with a 6 percent rate after six months. Not bad, if we compare it with the average teen quit rate of 2 to 3 percent.

“With 75 percent of youths between the ages of 12 and 17 owning a cell phone, there is immense potential for mobile technologies to affect health awareness and behavior change among teens,” Augustson said.

Sign up your teenager for the program at teen.smokefree.gov or text QUIT to iQUIT (47848).

Here’s a feel good stat for everyone; a study published in 2011 found that text messages urging smokers to quit can double the quit rate among teenagers. In addition, the “txt2stop” study revealed that 10.7 percent of smokers who received motivational quit-smoking texts were clean after six months, as compared with 4.9 percent of smokers deprived of this privilege.