Kid influencers market junk food and sugary drinks through product placement to billions of viewers. This was found in a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.
The researchers analyzed 418 YouTube videos of the five most watched child influencers on the platform in 2019 and found that of the 179 videos featuring food or drink, around 90% advertised unhealthy branded items such as fast food.
“It was really unhealthy brands from a landslide, and that was the most shocking part,” said Marie Bragg, study author and assistant professor of public health nutrition at the School of Global Public Health and Langone Medical Center at New York University .
The parents of the child influencers publish videos of their children in which, for example, they play with toys and unwrap gifts – often in front of a large audience.
According to the study, Ryan’s World’s 8-year-old Ryan Kaji was the highest-paid YouTube influencer of 2019. He made $ 26 million in ads, sponsored posts and product placements.
One of Ryan’s 46 million views video shows him wearing a hat with a McDonald’s logo pretending to be a cashier and making cheeseburgers.
McDonald’s MCD,
-0,58%
According to the study, this was the highest number of product placements. The researchers also found that KO children and Coca-Cola,
+ 0,20%
were featured frequently.
“The Coca-Cola Company is committed to responsible marketing and we do not market directly to children under the age of 12,” said the company. “In particular, we do not buy advertising for target groups that have more than 35 percent of children under the age of 12. This includes marketing through television, radio, print, internet and cell phones. We also do not hire child influencers. ”
Ferrero USA, the company that owns children, said it does not pay for or seek out free advertising from influencers with an audience of children.
McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment.
Research suggests that young children are particularly susceptible to marketing – and even more so when an influencer is promoting a product.
“Children are a special audience,” said Michael Robb, senior director of research at Common Sense Media. “There are certain cognitive limitations in children that make it difficult for children under the age of seven to really understand the intent of advertisers.”
Robb believes that commercial advertising aimed at young children should either be eliminated or severely restricted, especially on digital platforms like YouTube.
There are strict rules on television advertising against a variety of programs that sell products, but this rule doesn’t apply to YouTube, which is owned by Google toget.
+ 0,86%.
In reality, however, due to the intimacy of the platform, children form even closer emotional bonds with the influencers they see on YouTube.
“Because kids have these cognitive limitations that prevent them from really understanding what an ad is, and because they form these emotional bonds with favorite personalities, it just makes them a perfect storm,” said Robb. “It makes it extremely difficult for children to separate the intent of an advertiser or an influencer from what is in their own interest.”
According to Bragg, product placement in kid influencer videos is effective. “Pester power,” when children ask their parents for certain products or brands, generates annual sales of $ 190 billion, she said.
Bragg said parents may have more power to change the advertising content produced by influencers than they might think, despite the fact that it’s difficult to compete with corporate advertising budgets.
“A lot of these influencers are really invested in their fan base, so I would imagine if fans said they’d love to see a mix of healthier things that could help turn the tide,” she said. “It really speaks to the need for parents to have their say about what they want to see in these videos.”
However, Bragg said the solution is not to blame the influencers or their families because “it’s hard to turn down millions of dollars”.
Instead, parents and lawyers could put pressure on companies to be more responsible with the sponsorships they sponsor.
“We as a society and as a government have a responsibility to help parents,” she said. “Obesity and its comorbidities cost a lot of money. So if we’re able to set policies and put pressure on companies to change their practices, that’s important. ”
The researchers are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to enact stricter regulations on how child influencers can be used to promote unhealthy foods and drinks.
According to Bragg, the Children’s Design and Safety Act (KIDS), introduced in March by Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, seeks to protect children from influencer marketing, but focuses more on nicotine and tobacco products .
“Expand bills like the KIDS Act [to include junk food] could strengthen this political landscape even more, ”she said.
In addition to stricter federal regulations, Robb said there was still a lot of research to be done on digital media, influencers and children.
“It’s really important that we do this research much better and put in some roadblocks and rules to protect children,” he said. “They are much more in a wild west when it comes to the kind of ads they can get.”
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