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 Advertising aimed at kids has long been linked to an increased risk
that children will make unhealthy food choices and press their
parents to buy them more processed, sugary, and calorie-loaded
foods. Studies also suggest children can be easily swayed to try
junk food endorsed by celebrities and cartoon characters. Less
clear, however, is how their eating habits are impacted by social
media influencers.
For the current study, researchers in the UK recruited 176 children,
ages 9 to 11, and showed them Instagram profiles for two of their
age group's most popular YouTube video bloggers. The children were
randomly assigned to view three types of Instagram profiles: healthy
food marketing, junk food promotions, or endorsements unrelated to
food.
After kids saw the Instagram profiles, researchers served four
snacks - jelly candy, chocolate buttons, carrots, and seedless white
grapes - and let kids eat as much as they wanted for 10 minutes.
None of these foods were the same items kids saw on Instagram.
On average, kids who saw junk food promotions consumed 448 calories,
compared with 389 calories for children who saw healthy food
marketing and 357 for those who didn't see any food promotions, the
study found.
While all of the kids ate much more candy than carrots or grapes,
kids who saw junk food promotions consumed more sweets than the
other children: an average of 385 calories compared with 320
calories for kids who saw healthy food marketing and 292 calories
for those who didn't see food promotions.
"Children look to social media for role models, and are likely to
imitate the behavior of media characters that they look up to and
admire," said lead study author Anna Coates of the University of
Liverpool in the U.K.
"Unlike adults, children are more impulsive and are less motivated
to resist food marketing as they are not driven by long term health
goals," Coates said by email.
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One of the YouTube stars shown to kids in the study was a
26-year-old female with about 12.1 million subscribers on YouTube;
the other was a 23-year-old male with about 4.1 million subscribers.
There wasn't a meaningful difference in the total calories consumed
or the amount of candy eaten by kids who saw healthy food promotions
or no food marketing at all, researchers report in Pediatrics.
One limitation of the study is that many of the kids were already
familiar with the two video bloggers featured in the experiment, and
it's possible that their food choices were impacted by how much they
liked or disliked these "vloggers" before they joined the study,
researchers note.
Another drawback is that the experiment didn't look at how kids may
actually engage with social media content, the study authors note.
It didn't assess how children might be influenced by content "liked"
or shared by their friends in the real world.
Even so, the results offer fresh evidence of how social media can
negatively impact kids' eating habits, said Jennifer Harris of the
Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of
Connecticut in Storrs.
"We already knew that food companies spend a lot of money to popular
social media influencers to appeal to teens and increase the 'cool'
factor for their products," Harris, who wasn't involved in the
study, said by email. "But this is the first study to show that this
type of marketing increases children's consumption of any available
junk food - not just the advertised products."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2NIXaxI Pediatrics, online March 4, 2019.
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