Kid influencers promoting junk food on YouTube, parents helpless

New York, Oct 26 : The ‘kid influencers — children whose parents film them doing activities such as science experiments, playing with toys, or celebrating their birthdays — are promoting junk food brands on YouTube and millions of parents have no choice but to turn their children to watch such videos, a new study has stressed.
The growing popularity of kid influencers have caught the attention of companies, who advertise or sponsor posts to promote their products before or during videos.
In fact, the highest-paid YouTube influencer of the past two years was an eight-year-old who earned $26 million last year.
Kids with wildly popular YouTube channels are frequently promoting unhealthy food and drinks in their videos, warned researchers at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.
“Kids already see several thousand food commercials on television every year, and adding these YouTube videos on top of it may make it even more difficult for parents and children to maintain a healthy diet,” said Marie Bragg, assistant professor of public health nutrition at NYU School of Global Public Health.
“We need a digital media environment that supports healthy eating instead of discouraging it”, she said in a paper published in the journal Pediatrics.