Jul 27, 2015 04:21 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests teenagers are more likely to use e-cigarettes if their friends or family members use the device, Reuters reported.

Researchers at the University of Southern California found that teens with three or four friends who use e-cigarettes are 104 times more likely to use the battery-powered devices than those with no friends who currently use the personal vaporizers.

"There is a lot of concern by the public health community that e-cigarettes may be recruiting a whole new group of people who never smoked cigarettes," Jessica Barrington-Trimis, lead author of the study, told Reuters.

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from more than 2,000 11th- and 12th-graders in Southern California. They found that 10 percent of teens in the study were currently using personal vaporizers. 

Forty percent of teenagers who use vaporizers have never smoked a conventional cigarette, "adding to the worries that the devices are attracting a whole new group of underage user, not just teens trying to quit regular cigarettes," Today reported.  

They also revealed that 91 percent of teens who vaped have reported getting positive feedback about the devices. According to HealthDay, these positive attitudes may be linked to a greater risk of teens' smoking, a trend that has declined over the past few years.

The findings do not prove a causal link between e-cigarette use and cigarette smoking among teens, "But they raise the possibility that e-cigarettes are encouraging a more tobacco-friendly culture among kids," HealthDay reported.

"E-cigarettes often contain nicotine, so they may induce sort of a psychological dependency on nicotine and then may lead to future cigarette use," Barrington-Trimis told Today. "Or, e-cigarettes may lead to the normalization of smoking behaviors and that's the normalization that we're concerned with."

The findings are detailed in the journal Pediatrics. 

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