The Little Power Players of the Digital World
Influencer culture has spread to the younger generation where children with access to the media are jumping at the opportunity to use digital platforms to their advantage. Today’s blog post will explore how child social media influencers can have a negative impact on their young viewers.
In recent years, there has been a concern on the product placement within child influencers vlogs (video blogs). Children often display and promote dietary products high in fat, sugar and salt (Coates et al, 2019). Food marketing in the media is one of the main causes for children’s unhealthy eating habits and child influencers are seen to be promoting products that increases the risk of obesity and diseases (WHO, 2010).
Above: Child social media influencer Ryan’s YouTube channel displaying unhealthy food product placement (Alruwaily et al, 2020)
Children engaging in child influencers content creates a highly influential effectiveness rate through the identity similarities promoting parasocial relationships with the children in the vlogs (De Droog et al, 2012). Smit et al (2020) conducted a longitudinal study on children. They found that the number of vlogs the children watched correlated with the consumption of unhealthy beverages two years later. The obesity problem in the UK and USA must be tackled and the evidence suggests that the influence of the media plays a large role in children’s eating habits.
Alruwaily et al (2020) offers a solution for this problem, The Federal Trade Commission should tighten their regulations regarding the issue of product placement within child influencer’s YouTube videos. I agree that this will help the issue. Another way this can be tackled is by replacing the product placement with healthier food options to promote a healthier diet and lifestyle within vlogs. Many would not consider influencers as a significant factor involved in children’s dietary behaviours. This illustrates change is needed imminently and the media must always be considered in an explanation for social behaviours due to its highly influential impacts. Hopefully the fight against child obesity and the promotion of healthier dietary behaviours amongst children can be promoted through this way instead.
Bibliography
Alruwaily, A., Mangold, C., Greene, T., Arshonsky, J., Cassidy, O., Pomeranz, J. L., & Bragg, M. (2020). Child social media influencers and unhealthy food product placement. Pediatrics, 146(5). https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/5/e20194057.abstract
Alruwaily, A., Mangold, C., Greene, T., Arshonsky, J., Cassidy, O., Pomeranz, J. L., & Bragg, M. (2020). Child social media influencer’s YouTube channel [Screenshot]. Online. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/5/e20194057.abstract
Coates, A. E., Hardman, C. A., Halford, J. C., Christiansen, P., & Boyland, E. J. (2019). Food and beverage cues featured in YouTube videos of social media influencers popular with children: an exploratory study. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2142. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02142/full
De Droog, S. M., Buijzen, M., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2012). Use a rabbit or a rhino to sell a carrot? The effect of character–product congruence on children's liking of healthy foods. Journal of health communication, 17(9), 1068-1080. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10810730.2011.650833
Smit, C. R., Buijs, L., van Woudenberg, T. J., Bevelander, K. E., & Buijzen, M. (2020). The impact of social media influencers on children’s dietary behaviors. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2975. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02975/full
World Health Organization. (2010). Set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44416/9789241500210_eng.pdf