Background: Currently 21% of West Australian adults smoke on a daily basis and risk serious health problems. Most of these smokers first started at age 15 or 16 years of age. Unfortunately this age-group is resistant to tradition health warnings about the dangers of smoking because most teenage smokers intend “to quit long before it gets to that”. The fact that they will only possibly develop health problems in older age yields low motivational concern. Young smokers appear more sensitive to physical appearance and it is hypothesized that using photographic software to demonstrate personalized simulations of their inevitably aged “smoker's face” if they continue to smoke will yield much greater motivations to quit.

Method: Four-hundred males and females aged 15-24 with equal numbers of smokers and non-smokers will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. Participants will be photographed and the images will be processed by ageing software. Those in the intervention group will be shown a demonstration of what they will look like aged as both as a smoker and a non-smoker to demonstrate the ageing effects of smoking. Control group participants will only be exposed to demonstrations of ageing as a non-smoker only. Attitudes towards smoking and future intentions to smoke will then be assessed.

Results: Conclusions: Implications: It is hypothesised that exposure to personalised images of "smoker's face" will increase the urgency felt by smokers to quit, and decrease non-smokers' future intentions to smoke, and provide a novel and powerful message for youth-orientated smoking cessation.