A lesser-known but common form of product placement promotes children’s exposure to unhealthy foods and guarantees stronger regulation-ScienceDaily

Food and beverage companies spend $ 1.8 billion annually to sell their products to young people. TV advertising is a major source of food marketing, but companies are dramatically increasing their online advertising in response to increasing consumer use of social media.

“Children already watch thousands of food commercials on TV each year, and adding these YouTube videos on top of them can make it even more difficult for parents and children to maintain a healthy diet.” Said Marie Bragg, an assistant professor of public health and nutrition. Associate Professor at NYU Faculty of Global Public Health and NYU Langone School of Population Health. “We need a digital media environment that supports a healthy diet rather than discourages it.”

YouTube is the second most visited website in the world and a popular destination for children seeking entertainment. Over 80% of parents with children under the age of 12 allow their children to watch YouTube, and 35% of parents report that their children watch YouTube on a regular basis.

“YouTube’s appeal could be particularly strong in 2020. Many parents work remotely and need to tackle the difficult task of taking their young children home for COVID-19. “Because,” said Bragg, the lead author of the study.

When finding a video of young children watching, millions of parents film children doing activities such as “child influencers”, or scientific experiments, playing with toys, celebrating birthdays, etc. Look at the videos of the children who did. The growing popularity of these YouTube videos has attracted the attention of companies that promote or sponsor posts to promote their products before or during the video. In fact, the highest-paying YouTube influencer in the last two years was the eight-year-old who earned $ 26 million last year.

“Parents may not be aware that children’s influencers are often paid by food companies to promote unhealthy food and drink in videos. Our survey is from children’s influencers. This is the first study to quantify how much junk food product placement appears in YouTube videos. “

Bragg and her colleagues identified the five most popular child influencers on YouTube in 2019 (ages 3-14 years) and analyzed the most watched videos. Focusing on a sample of 418 YouTube videos, we recorded whether the videos showed food and drink, which items and brands were shown, and evaluated their nutritional value.

Researchers have found that nearly half (42.8 percent) of the most popular videos from child influencers promote food and drink. Over 90% of the products shown are unhealthy branded foods, drinks, or fast food toys, with fast food being the most frequently featured junk food, followed by candies and sodas. We featured unhealthy branded items like hot dogs (4%), healthy branded items like fruit (3%), and healthy branded items like yogurt branded (2%). There are only a few videos.

The video about the placement of junk food products has been watched over a billion times. This is an astonishing level of exposure for food and beverage companies.

“I was worried that kid influencers were promoting a ton of junk food on YouTube videos, and that those videos were creating a huge amount of screen time for these unhealthy products,” Bragg said. Says.

Researchers don’t know which food and beverage product placements have been approved, but these videos allow food companies to directly (but subtly) advertise unhealthy foods to infants and their parents, so public health. I feel that there is a problem for me.

“It’s the perfect storm to foster malnutrition. Research shows that influencers look like” everyday people, “so people trust them. Seeing these kid influencers eating certain foods doesn’t necessarily look like an ad. However, advertising, and many studies, have shown that children who see food ads burn more calories than children who see non-food ads. That’s why the National Academy of Medicine and the World Health Organization identify food marketing as a major driver of childhood obesity. Bragg.

Researchers are encouraging federal and state regulators to tighten and enforce regulation of junk food advertising by child influencers.

“We hope that the results of this study will encourage the Federal Trade Commission and the State Attorney General to focus on this issue and identify strategies for protecting children and public health,” the study said. Jennifer Pomerans, co-author of the program and assistant professor of public health policy and management, said. At the Faculty of Global Public Health, NYU.