Background Research

We began our background research looking up “correlation between JUULing and playing Fortnite” and found nothing at all so we decided to take a different approach. We decided to research each variable individually and see what we could find. We initially started researching the percentage of high schoolers that JUUL by using google and searching “number of high schoolers that juul”. We found articles explaing on how JUULing is a problem in high schools http://www.businessinsider.com/juul-e-cigarettes-are-taking-over-high-schools-2018-3, and we found articles explaing what JUUling is , https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/health/high-schools-vaping-epidemic/index.html, but we failed to find any studies. We then decided to change our wording switching to “research on high schoolers juuling”, and found some more interesting results. The first thing we found was a study from The American Academy of Pediatrics looking for a correlation between E-cigarette use and potential to try real cigarettes http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/11/30/peds.2017-1832.  We then went back and found another interesting fact sheet from The Campaign For Tobacco Free Kids, that stated in 2016 11.3% of high schoolers used e-cigarettes. The fact sheet also talked about the extreme growth of the JUUl in 2017 and continuing to 2018. Our last attempt to find what we were looking for involved contacting JUULlabs on twitter sending them the following message “Hello, I am student at north olmsted high school doing research and an analysis on the number of high school aged kids that JUUL. I was wondering if you have done any research of a larger population of high school age students that we can compare to. Thanks’ To which we have failed to get a response.

We then used www.google.com again to find any studies about the number of high school aged kids that play Fortnite. We first searched “studies on high schoolers who play fortnite”, and found https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/05/03/educators-battle-fortnite-for-students-attention.html however this talks about how Fortnite is a problem in the classroom, distracticng the students, nothing related to the number of high schoolers that play Fortnite. After not finding much with that phrase, we switched it up by searching “Number of teens who play fortnite”, and found https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/05/many-people-play-fortnite-battle-royale-7363495/ which states that Fortnite set a record by having 3.4 million concurrent players online at one time, closer to what we want but still not what we are looking for. We then tried one laste phase, “Studies on teenagers playing fortnite”, and found something even closer to what we were looking for. The article https://nypost.com/2018/03/12/popular-video-game-driving-teens-wild-and-parents-crazy/ states that as of March 12, Fortnite had 40 million signed up players. After this we tried a similar approach to what we did for the JUUl research, we contacted Fortnite support through email, asking them if they had conducted research on the demographics of their player base, they responded with : We've received your message and will be with you shortly. Thank you for submitting your request. We have received your request and are working on responding to you as soon as possible. If you have any additional information to add to this case, please reply to this email.” After around a week of waiting, we have still not been contacted.