Abstract
Recent studies suggest that adolescents are spending significant amounts of time on social media. Brands are taking advantage of this fact and actively using social media to reach adolescent consumers, primarily via social media influencers. Adolescents consider the sponsored brand posts by social media influencers to be trustworthy and honest, thus reducing their critical evaluation of the ads. While several researchers have pointed to the critical role that parents play in their adolescents becoming digitally literate and empowered, there is little understanding of parental views and drivers of parental views on social media influencers and means by which they mediate their adolescents’ exposure to social media influencers. Our specific research questions are the following: (a) How does parents’ use of social media relate to their attitudes toward and mediation of social media influencers? (b) What is the role of psychological empowerment in enabling the relationship? Through a survey of approximately 200 mothers of adolescents (between the ages of 11 and 17 years), we examine how parents’ social media usage (active or passive) is related to their views toward social media influencers and mediation of social media influencers. We find that active (vs. passive) use of social media by parents led them to significantly (vs. not significantly) mediate social media influencers’ impact. Passive (vs. active) use of social media led to parents having a significant (vs. not significant) positive view of social media influencers. We explain this direct relationship by the level and kind of psychological empowerment (intrapersonal or interactional) that a parent experiences. Intrapersonal empowerment is related to self-efficacy, perceived competence, and desire for control, whereas interactional empowerment is related to an individual’s engagement in collective action and interactions with others. We find that active use of parental mediation increases intrapersonal empowerment resulting in parental mediation of social media influencers but has no effect on their positive or negative views on social media influencers. Moreover, passive use of social media results in interactional empowerment but has no significant impact on parental mediation but is related to positive views of social media influencers. Implications for regulators, practitioners, and parents are then discussed.
Highlights
The presence of social media is everywhere
The three main research questions we explore in our study are: (a) whether active, in comparison to passive, social media use has a significant relationship to mediation of social media influencers; (b) to understand how parents actively using social media are empowered by demonstrating higher self-efficacy, competency, and control
In this paper, we focus on understanding parents’ perceptions of social media influencers by (a) examining how parents engage with social media in general, capturing the nature and patterns of their social media activities by considering passive vs. active use of social media, (b) relating such social media use with parental attitudes toward and how parents manage the impact of social media influencers on their adolescent, and (c) investigating the mediating role of psychological empowerment developed through social media use to explain the mediation methods taken to manage social media influencers
Summary
The presence of social media is everywhere. From a consumer perspective, its pervasiveness is enlightening and at the same time somewhat scary. The interactive and immersive nature of Internet ads tends to increase the persuasiveness of a branded message (van Reijmersdal et al, 2010) Receivers of such messages require not just advanced cognitive skills and resources to defend themselves against persuasive attempts and an understanding of how social media operates to recognize and effectively process branded social media posts. Its origin can be traced to traditional media and the presence of opinion leaders who for the purpose of persuasion lead discussions on specific topics related to their expertise (Zhao et al, 2018) Extending this definition to social media, users who started as a regular person or are famous in a field and who have accumulated a large number of followers on one or more of the online media platforms (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) and often persuade followers through their authentic messages are considered as social media influencers (Lou and Yuan, 2019). Surveys suggest that users tend to purchase more based on the influencer’s recommendations (Lou and Yuan, 2019)
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