Studies show children who are exposed to food advertisements consume more calories and are likely to ask parents to buy them sweets and snacks. For that reason, advertisers spend $1.8 billion annually to market foods and drinks to kids. A new study, “Child Social Media Influencers and Unhealthy Food Product Placement,” in the November 2020 Pediatrics (published online Oct. 26), found kid influencers on popular streaming platforms generate millions of impressions for unhealthy food and drink brands. “Kid influencers” are young online celebrities that can earn significant profits from advertisements and endorsements that they share with large social media fan bases. For example, the highest-paid YouTube influencer in 2018 and 2019 was an 8-year-old who earned $26 million from endorsements and online ads. For this study, researchers identified the five most-watched kid influencers, ages 3-14 years, on YouTube in 2019. They found the influencers—with an average age of 7.3—generated 48.2 billion views and 38.6 million subscribers through 10,058 videos they posted on YouTube as of July 2019. Researchers examined the influencers’ 50 most-watched videos, plus a sample of 50 videos that included foods or beverages, and found that 42.8% of these videos, which were viewed 1 billion times, featured food or beverages. Ninety percent of those foods and beverages were unhealthy branded food items. A fast-food chain accounted for 30% of the branded product placements in the videos, while healthy foods like fruit and yogurt received very little attention. According to the researchers, many tactics in these videos, such as blurring content with advertising, and using the hosts to deliver the commercial content, may qualify as unfair and deceptive acts and practices directed at children under federal and state consumer protection laws. Researchers concluded that the Federal Trade Commission should enact regulations that more adequately address unhealthy food and beverage brands promoted by child Influencers on streaming platforms, as this new advertising is little understood and is currently under-regulated.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.