YouTube's Kid Influencers Promoting Junk Food As Companies Turn To Social Media: Study

Popular videos from kids on YouTube are frequently promoting unhealthy food and beverages, a new study found. The study shows how these family-friendly videos can be a platform for subtle but direct advertising for unhealthy products.

YouTube is one of the most-visited websites in the world and even children are finding fame and "influence" on these channels. With food and beverage companies also turning to online advertising, even these kid influencers are being tapped to promote products.

In 2018 and 2019, for instance, the highest-paid YouTube influencer was an 8-year-old who earned $26 million from advertisements and sponsored posts.

In their study, published in the journal Pediatrics, the researchers sought to determine how much kid influencers tend to promote branded and unbranded food. They analyzed the most-watched videos from five most popular kid influencers in 2019 whose ages ranged from 3 to 14 years old. The researchers determined the frequency at which the highly watched videos promoted food or drinks in the videos and also assessed the nutritional value of the food or drink items.

Among the 418 videos that met the search criteria, 179 of them (42.8%) promoted food or drinks, 90% of which were considered unhealthy. These included branded and unbranded unhealthy food and drinks, fast food, candy and soda.

"In fact, McDonald's accounted for the highest number (30.0%) of the branded product placements," the researchers wrote.

By comparison, only 3% of the videos showed healthy unbranded items and just 2% showed healthy branded items. In total, the videos promoting junk food items were viewed 1 billion times, which is problematic especially since over 80% of parents with children younger than 12 years old allow their kids to watch YouTube.

"Parents may not realize that kid influencers are often paid by food companies to promote unhealthy food and beverages in their videos," the senior author of the new study, Marie Bragg of New York University (NYU) Global Public Health and NYU Langone, said in a news release. "Our study is the first to quantify the extent to which junk food product placements appear in YouTube videos from kid influencers."

Although the study did not thoroughly discuss the health impacts of consuming unhealthy food or how such advertisements affect children's food choices, the results highlight how companies are using kid influencers when it comes to advertising.

"Most food advertising research has been focused on television commercials or online advertisements produced by companies," the researchers wrote. "This new advertising frontier, however, has been largely unstudied and underregulated."

The researchers urge regulators to strengthen the guidelines for social media influencers to disclose endorsements.

"Kid influencers generate millions of impressions for unhealthy food and drink brands through product placement," the researchers wrote. "The Federal Trade Commission should strengthen regulations regarding product placement on YouTube videos featuring young children."

This was not the first such demand for regulations regarding kid influencers. For instance, the recently introduced Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act seeks to address the possible harms to children online, including the ones brought about by inappropriate content and "manipulative marketing."

"Powerful companies push kids to buy products at every turn online, and top platforms are saturated with disturbing content that no kid should ever be exposed to," co-author of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), said in March. "As a society, we're playing catch up to the serious risks to kids online, and Congress has a responsibility to say loud and clear that Big Tech needs to get serious about the wellbeing of children and teens."

Just this year, France also took steps to regulate kid influencers to protect them when it comes to their earnings and privacy.

"We hope that the results of this study encourage the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to focus on this issue and identify strategies to protect children and public health," study co-author Jennifer Pomeranz of NYU School of Global Public Health said in the news release.