Internet and mobile phone text messaging intervention for college smokers

Abstract

Objective: The authors developed a smoking cessation program using mobile phone text messaging to provide tailored and stage-specific messages to college smokers.

Participants and methods: The authors recruited 31 daily smokers who desired to quit from a college campus and asked them to use an Internet and mobile phone text messaging program to quit smoking.

Results: Six weeks after program initiation, 45% reported abstinence with 42% abstinent based on cotinine verification. Continued smokers reported significantly reduced smoking rates and dependence. Overall, participants accepted the text messages.

Conclusions: These results replicate findings from an earlier study and indicate that mobile phone text messaging is a potentially efficacious and easily disseminated method for providing cessation interventions to young adult smokers.