Abstract
Children nowadays spend many hours online watching YouTube videos in which their favorite vloggers are playing games, unboxing toys, reviewing products, making jokes or just going about their daily activities. These vloggers regularly post attractive and entertaining content in the hope of building a large follower base. Although many of these vloggers are adults, the number of child vloggers is flourishing. The famous child vlogger Ryan of Ryan’s World, for instance, has more than 19 million viewers and he is (at age seven) a social media influencer. The popularity of these vloggers incited advertisers to include them as a new marketing communication tool, also referred to as influencer marketing, in their marketing strategy. Accordingly, many influential vloggers now receive free products from brands in return for a mention in one of their videos and their other social media (e.g., TikTok or Instagram) and some are even paid to create a sponsored post or video and distribute it to their followers. This sponsored content appears to be highly influential and may affect young children’s brand preferences. Given the limited advertising literacy skills (i.e., knowledge of advertising and skills to critically reflect on this advertising) of children under age 12, they are a vulnerable target group when it comes to persuasion. Therefore, caution is needed when implementing this marketing tactic to target them. However, research on how influencer marketing affects young children (under 12) is scarce and it is unclear how these young children can be empowered to critically cope with this fairly new form of persuasion. This paper therefore aims to shed light on why and how social media influencers have persuasive power over their young followers. The paper starts with providing insights into how and why social media influencers became a new source in advertising. We then discuss the few studies that have been conducted on influencer marketing among young children (under 12), based on a systematic literature review, and take these findings to formulate societal and policy implications and develop a future research agenda.
Highlights
Today, children have plenty of options for digital entertainment and social media
All of the included articles focus on YouTube as a platform, which is not surprising as it is frequently used among children (Pew Research Center, 2018; Ofcom, 2019)
No studies yet focused on TikTok, a social media platform which has become very popular among young children
Summary
Children have plenty of options for digital entertainment and social media. YouTube in particular, has emerged as a platform for children’s screen time and an alternative for traditional television (TV) content (Watson, 2019). Mimetic production in YouTube toy unboxing videos “Unboxing” videos: co-construction of the child as cyberflâneur Making sense of YouTubers: how Swedish children construct and negotiate the YouTuber Misslisibell as a girl celebrity Children’s bonding with popular YouTube vloggers and their attitudes toward brand and product endorsements in vlogs: an explorative study Social media influencer marketing and children’s food intake: a randomized trial The effect of influencer marketing of food and a “protective” advertising disclosure on children’s food intake How an advertising disclosure alerts young adolescents to sponsored vlogs: the moderating role of a peer-based advertising literacy intervention through an informational vlog Parenting “YouTube natives”: the impact of pre-roll advertising and text disclosures on parental responses to sponsored child influencer videos. High levels of parental mediation conditionally impacted the indirect effect of a sponsor pre-roll advertisement via sponsorship transparency on perceptions of the unboxing video and attitudes toward the sponsor
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