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Foreign.
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Welcome to Screen Deep, where we decode young brains and behavior in a digital world. I'm your host, Chris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens. Today's conversation explores the world of online influencers. How influencer culture and marketing are shaping the way children and adolescents think, feel, and make decisions, often in ways that are difficult to recognize, even for adults. Our guest is Dr. Lisela Hutters, professor of Marketing ethics at Ghent University in Belgium and director of the center for persuasive communication. Dr. Hudders is a leading expert on how children and adolescents respond to digital advertising and influencer content. Her research examines everything from the rise of kid fluencers and the commercialization of childhood to the ways algorithms and hidden marketing strategies influence young audiences. She also studies how these same persuasive techniques can be used to promote healthier behaviors and stronger digital literacy. Welcome, Liselotte.
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Thank you.
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So let's dive right into the deep end. What is the psychology of influencing? Or put another way, what makes an influencer influential?
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Well, in literature, they often refer to three underlying expertise, authenticity, and intimacy. So first, for expertise, influencers are often building expertise in a particular domain. They specialize in fashion, in fitness. They explain how they do sports and how you can sport as a follower to get a more fit body, have more muscles, food influencers who explain you how to eat more healthy or how to cook vegan, for instance. And by these expertise, by the knowledge they have on this topic, they become opinion leaders. And what they say, and also what products and what brands they promote becomes very trustworthy for followers. So that's the first mechanism, this expertise, that leads to more credibility and more trustworthiness. So the second factor is the authenticity. Influencers really give you an insight into their daily life, their activities, you know who their friends are, their family, you know, their house, their hobbies. You also know what brand deals they have. And you not only see how they advertise products, but they also take you behind the scenes, which shows you that they generally like the promotion, the brand that they are promoting, which makes it very trustworthy. And then the third thing is the intimacy, and it adds to the other two mechanisms, because influencers also want to give you the feeling that you know them very well and you can respond to them, you can connect very easily to them. It's different. Compared to traditional celebrities, they were very distant, but now the influencers come very close. You can respond to their comments. You can also send them personal messages. And the influencers also go into that by giving followers opportunities to ask them Personal questions, and then they show what questions the followers had and respond to that. And in that way, they create some kind of parasocial relationship where you as a follower, really have the idea that you became a friend to that influencer. But of course, it's more interactional compared to television celebrities and television program stars, where you can have a connection with. But it's still more one way because you know the influencer much better than the influencer knows you, of course. So these three mechanisms really explain their persuasive effects.
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B
So how does this authenticity actually perceived authenticity, play into the influencer impact? Is there a way to measure an influencer's actual authenticity? Does intimacy affect perceived authenticity?
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Yeah, you can only measure perceived authenticity because it's in the eyes of followers, of course. And influencers can try to stimulate that authenticity by using certain strategies. For instance, it's very important in the case of sponsorships, because authenticity refers to the fact that you are generally saying things and your opinions are very honest and not influenced by the fact that you are paid for something. And for followers, of course, have the feeling that they are being manipulated if they know that you are paid to promote a certain product. And that can harm authenticity. But if you as an influencer, really show your passion for this product, if the product really fits your expertise, for instance, if you are a fashion influencer, it's natural that you promote some fashion brand. It can be more difficult when you then promote Nespresso as a brand, for instance, because then the fit might be less obvious compared to when you promote a fashion brand. So showing that you have a real passion for a brand is very important. And on the other hand, transparency can be important, so that you are honest about the fact that you are paid or that you are invited to an event can contribute to your authenticity. So these two factors are very important. Now, authenticity refers, on the one hand, to the fact that you, as an influencer can show who you really are and that followers really have the idea that they know you very well. But it can also refer to consistency and image, because some influencers also take on a role, a type. In Belgium, for instance, we have a famous influencer who plays his mother and do some funny sketches. And it's more than about consistency and image. And in every video, this mother type comes into play, and it's not really about who he really is, but it's about building this consistent image. So these are the two ways in which you can be authentic as an influencer.
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So you're really describing in many ways what's possible in the social media era. How has influencing changed over these different eras? And you know, there's the beginning and now we have these technological advancements that have happened that have changed influencer strategies. Is that impacting children and adolescents in a way that is different from an earlier era?
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Yeah, I think everything comes much closer and you find much more like minded people than you had in your traditional offline environment. Yeah, everyone is now very close. You can follow people who really fits your interests, have the same sorrows, have the same hobbies and ideas as you have and you can really look into their houses. You can really know them very well. It gives you an insight into what was hidden before. So that makes a huge difference with social media. In the Internet times, when Internet appeared, you already had the bloggers who blogged about their daily life on websites. But of course, social media made it much more easy for influencers to create content. Social media had a lot of opportunities and features that made it much easier to create content. It was also much easier to connect with the audiences with all the features that you can respond to comments as an influencer, that you can send personal messages, all these stickers that are available to to have these interactions. So that becomes much more easy. And it's also much more easy to monetize your content with the paid partnership programs of social media and also the brand integrations and the content. Now you also see some developments like TikTok for instance, there was a huge change of photographic content to video content. Now everyone wants to watch short videos. Thanks to TikTok, you see that a lot of influencers changed from photo content pictures to videos. And also with AI there are a lot of new developments. Virtual influencers for instance, or a new category of influencers who are virtually created individuals. It can be a real influencer that makes an avatar or it can be completely fictitious individual created by a brand or by a company. And they can use these influencers to promote different products. So the technological advances really change the way influencers can work and operate.
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I mean, you're making me think about the sort of front facing cameras that are not new anymore, but how that really changed the ability to create and post content quickly. Including videos and also algorithms. They play a powerful role in what we all see online every day. Our algorithm driven recommendations intensifying the power of influencers.
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Yeah, I think on the one hand, yes, because algorithms make you see a lot of similar content and it makes you think that all people are using the same products, trends, hypes and it can Be then more influential because you think all people behave like that and all people approve that you behave like that. So it induces social norms which are very powerful for people's behavior and very influential. We are often listening to what other people think and do, and we like to behave in similar ways. But on the other hand, I also think that algorithms might hinder influencers because algorithms can really decide on what is shown on your feed. There is a Belgian influencer that post last week that her videos were not featured in the feeds of their followers. So she was a bit hindered by the algorithm system. So you see that influencers are also trying to see and search what content is promoted through the algorithm and they change the content. So algorithms are also very powerful in determining what content should be made by influencers and what content is visible or is not visible to followers.
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And influencers are having to disclose that they may have been paid to promote a product. Almost 10 years ago, around the same time social media and smartphones had reached a really high degree of adoption among youth, you were involved with research on adults that helped us understand how people perceive brands or products used by influencers based on follower count. Can you describe this and do children and adolescents and adults respond to influencer content in the same way?
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Yeah, I think it has changed a lot. Follower counts are maybe not that important anymore, especially not in the context of TikTok, where the for you page is much more important than really the influencers that you are following. So I'm not sure if follower count is that important today. It is important in the fact that it determines how much engagement an influencer can have with its audience. If you have thousands, millions of followers, it's much more, more difficult to interact with your followers and respond to every comment you get and all the personal messages. If you are a smaller influencer, you can really interact, you can comment and there is much more engagement. So that makes a huge difference. And it makes a huge difference in the type of impact you have. If you want to, for instance, as a brand and collaborate with a huge influencer, it's better to create some brand awareness because you know that a lot of people will see your brand. But it may also be a bit less intensive compared to when you collaborate with a smaller micro influencer or nano influencer even, because then you see that followers are much more engaged with the content that the influencer is posting. They are commenting much more strongly on that and respond more intensely. So in that way it is still important. When are children responding differently? I think especially in the context of sponsored content, it may be more difficult for children, especially the young wants to understand sponsored content. We recently did a study among preschoolers and children under 13 years. And then we saw that the preschool children could recognize pre roll advertising on YouTube because they recognized the yellow line and they know that they had to skip the ad if they want to look at the content that they want to watch. But they could not explain what advertising really was, what the intent was, so they did not have a deeper understanding. For the primary school children, that was much better. They could elaborate a bit more, they understood the goal of advertising better. But still for them, the integration of commercial content in videos of influencers was really difficult to detect. So disclosures for them is much more important to help detect the commercial nature of the content. And that's a bit the same for adults, of course, because for influencing there is such a complex business model behind it, different types of commercial deals, and a clear disclosure is for adults important. But also for children, it's very important to really understand how they are persuaded and what the nature of the deal is.
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I'm really glad you brought up younger children and what they can and cannot understand at different ages and stages because their brains are developing rapidly and even their minds are not fully developed. And it's hard for them to understand certain concepts because they're awfully complicated. What are the particular vulnerabilities of children when it comes to influencer content based on the fact that they're at a younger age or stage of development?
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One thing that really came up in our study was that the young children really have difficulties to understand what is real and what is scripted. Because with the kidfluencers you see a lot of scripted content. But for children it's difficult to know that it's some kind of pretend play, that there are scenarios behind it, that it's not really what they are doing, what they are liking. And parents were also very worried about this because then they saw that children are really influenced, thought that everyone lives in such a beautiful big house, that they also wanted to have so much toys when it was their birthday, want to throw big birthday parties. So they were worried about how this influencer content influence their worldview and how they perceive the world and how they see what is real. And especially in the age of AI, the children themselves also indicated that for them it was really difficult to know when was a video created by AI, when it was real, and that they were worried and that they wanted to have some tools to make it more easy to Detect such content.
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I mean, even explaining something like artificial intelligence to a five year old is a really difficult thing to do. I think adults are still grappling with what does that really mean? How does that really work? What kinds of behavioral decisions are children and adolescents making in response to influencer content?
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I think they really see these influencers as some role models and they are imitating their behaviors. You see that they also integrate it in their play. In our, it was more a qualitative study that we did, co creation study. We watched a video and then a bit later it was about shopping. And we also had a shopping environment in the class. And then you really saw that children imitate the behavior. It was about money and what you can pay and they were really on the cashier. And also how much does this cost? And you really saw that they are imitating what they saw on the screen. And for the branded content, you also see that it can generate some interest for the brands they get to know, new brands, new stores, and that they are very attracted to what they see.
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It's very easy to form a parasocial or seemingly real relationship with a favorite influencer. Parasocial relationships are not necessarily negative. And we've talked to other researchers in our Ask the Experts webinars about how real parasocial relationships feel to children. When does a parasocial relationship with an influencer cross a line from healthy to harmful?
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Yeah, difficult to say when I'm thinking about my research on adolescence. We did some study on food influencers and how we can use influencers to promote more healthy eating, to raise awareness on misinformation. And in this context you see a lot of influencers who are also talking about mental health and issues. And then if you see that the children, adolescents trust the influencer really well and also trust them to talk about difficult things they experience in their lives. And then if an influencer has that many followers that they cannot respond to these personal comments, it can become worrisome because followers can really trust influencers if they are telling about problems they experience at home, then the influencer should respond in an appropriate way to those things and at least respond. But it's not always possible if you have thousands or hundred thousands of followers. So I think that can be problematic because then on the one hand you think, oh, it's really trusted friend and he can help me or she can help me, and then you get no response. That can be very harmful on the one hand, and that you also see some crowdfunding that influencers are trying to make use of that parasocial relationship to raise funds among their followers to get. Get some donations. So that can also be harmful if, especially if it's about young children or adolescents.
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So what are the positive aspects of influencer content and its impact on children? What are the ways influencing is being used to promote healthy habits and behaviors?
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Well, they can really function as role models. They can show people how to behave, how to perform sports behaviors, how to eat healthy. So they can really show you how to do it, show you why a certain goal is desirable, why is it important to be fit, why is it important to eat healthy, and how that goal is feasible to reach. So they can really be role models that can help you change behavior. They are much more close compared to traditional sources or traditional prevention campaigns because they are more personal, authentic. So the same mechanisms as we see in commercial endorsements also work for nonprofit endorsements. But of course, behavioral change is not easy. It's a longitudinal process. It goes slow, and it does not always fit with the rapid, fluid nature of social media. So campaigns need to be designed differently. And when we were collaborating with influencers and a marketing agency to organize our campaign, we noticed the difficulties that you have if you want to endorse a behavioral change campaign because of deadlines are different, budgets are low, and then, okay, what will one influencer video change the behavior of adolescents? If they are watching so many videos in a day, they are browsing on TikTok on different moments in a day, multiple hours, what would one video then change? So that is difficult. If you see it as one separate campaign with a limited budget, I think it's difficult to be really impactful. So you really should think in the long run with the bigger campaign, multiple influencers involved. So that. That is also a difficulty that cannot be forgotten.
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I mean, you mentioned the business model earlier, and what you just described is a sort of a manifestation of a business model that is trying to keep you online as long as possible. It may not be as concerned with how it keeps you online, rather that it did keep you online. And influencers are a piece of that puzzle. They. They help with that goal of keeping you online. And selling things that then others can make a profit off of is also a priority for many people who are doing influencing. Do influencers have to disclose their financial incentives for content?
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Yeah, for a long time there were no clear rules. And that was the biggest issue then of influencer marketing, that it was really unclear what recomm was a genuine recommendation and what was paid. So now the rules changed in Europe, it was already in 2018 that they changed the Audiovisual Media Service act to include also social media. Then it needed some time to be implemented in the different European countries. But now influencers really have to disclose the partnership if they receive a product for free. If they are invited to an event, they already need to disclose this. So it's not only about the paid partnerships and the disclosure is very clear. So you need to add that it's advertising or publicity, you need to use the platform label and you need to tag the brand. And I think this last thing is very important because influencers are often endorsing a lot of brands. Sometimes in one video multiple brands appear and then it's very good as a follower that you know what kind of brands paid for this inclusion and what brands just appeared because the influencer used this product. So I think that the tagging of the brand is very important. In Belgium, there is no distinction whether you receive the products for free or whether you were paid. You have a long term ambassadorship, for instance. So I think giving more information about the nature of this deal is also important for followers to be better able to estimate how genuine the recommendation is and what the nature of the deal is. So you see also that influencers are not often adding that this is an advertising because they got a product for free or because they were invited to that event, not because they were paid. And sometimes they also disclose when it's non sponsored content because if you are really talking positively about a brand, followers are also suspicious because they know that for a long time it was not disclosed. And sometimes influencers are a bit hesitant to disclose because they are afraid that followers will respond too negatively if they endorse too many products or that the algorithm will hide their posts for followers. So they are really adding the non sponsorship disclosure to be more clear that some endorsements are not sponsored, but they just do it because they really like the product.
- [23:08]
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I mean, I'm thinking of just television shows or movies or streaming content and how product placement I think was a much older version of influencing. And I Are those streamers required to disclose that they're positioning soft drinks or purses or watches or computers as part of how they paid for that show. Is that one of the disclosures that's
- [23:35]
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required for traditional television product placements? There is a product placement logo in Belgium. It's a PP logo, but yeah, it's really not clearly visible. It's small on screen, it's pp. So people don't know really what it is. And it also does not mention what kind of brands paid for the inclusion. So there are of course a lot of brands in a television show or in a movie, so you don't know well what brand has been promoted. So I think it's now much better for the influencers because it's much clearer about what kind of brands are sponsoring the content and that it's advertising. It was a long discussion of what words should be used because there was a lot of research on what word is best to indicate advertising. And it should be clear in your language that it refers to advertising because people build some knowledge on advertising during their life based on experiences, based on education, and it's in their mind as an associative network. So they have a lot of associations with advertising, but it should be activated. And it can be more easily activated if you use a word that is commonly used to refer to advertising. So sponsoring, for instance, is in Belgium, less often used compared to advertising. And when you use the word advertising, the activation of that network of associations with advertising becomes much easier. So it's more easy to use the knowledge that you have regarding advertising and it's more easy to be critical then. So the use of the right words is very important.
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B
So do disclosures work?
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It's difficult. It can help to be more critical because at least you need to know what is being advertised to be able to be critical about that advertising. But it's not that. When you know that it's advertising, that you will not be persuaded, because sometimes it can be a good deal for you. If you are looking for new shoes and you see that an influencer is promoting some shoes and you like those shoes and you get a promotion code. Why wouldn't you respond positively then? So I think it can go in two ways. But the main issue is that it's hidden advertising, that it tries to deceive people and that that should be clear. And transparency is very important in advertising. And then as a follower, you can decide yourself if you want to be persuaded or not. But at least you know that. That it's. Yeah, that there is a commercial deal behind the sponsorship.
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Does awareness of an influencer's financial incentives mitigate how influenced youth are by influencer content? Or does the psychological effect remain the same regardless of awareness level?
- [26:20]
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I think it will depend on how the influencer promotes the product because you see that they are often really building a nice story. You see behind the scenes, it's not just buy this product. They are really putting a lot of effort in their posts and their videos to make the endorsements attractive and that really helps. So then even if you know it, you don't mind because you really like the video and the ad. And it's nice to. For instance, in Belgium there was an influencer who was invited to come by a brand and then you saw the behind the scenes, how she went there and it's nice to look at. So I think that can be very helpful even if you know it's sponsored. Yeah, you don't mind because it's nice content to see. But of course, if you see that a lot of influencers at one time are invited to a theme park, it becomes so obvious that it's a campaign, that it's the brand that really that they have the same messages. So the more standardized it becomes and the more you see that it's really advertising, the less persuasive it gets.
- [27:27]
B
Interesting, you mentioned using certain words or phrases when disclosing financial incentives. Does the specific way financial disclosures are made affect whether the audience members remember the disclosure? And are the psychological or timing tricks that allow influencers to make disclosures in a way that discourages critical thinking about disclosures?
- [27:52]
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Yeah, I think hide the disclosures, make them very small, unclear words, make it more difficult to detect them and then you will not realize that it's advertising and you will not be critical. Also the timing if you see it in front of the video, that can help you. When you're watching the video it can be more difficult because then you are watching the video, you don't have the energy or time to critically reflect on the content you see and activate your network. So that can be important things to to be more clear, the platform disclosure that is shown on top of the post, for instance, can be more helpful than when there is just one disclosure somewhere in the video at the bottom of the screen, then it's more difficult to detect.
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B
So the world of influencing children online involves some influencers who are kids themselves called kidfluencers. Are children more susceptible to influencers their own age?
- [28:52]
A
Well, we saw in our study that even the preschool children also like to watch adult influencers who have child appealing content. And mostly children like to watch children that are slightly older than themselves, not the same age. They perceive them as too childish, so they don't prefer this content. But children that are a few years older, they are very persuasive for the children as well.
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B
Interesting. Successful kid fluencers are making large amounts of money in the influencing economy. Are there protections for kid fluencers like there are for Hollywood Child actors?
- [29:32]
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Yeah, only since a few years. France was the first country that had some stricter regulations for these child influencers. So children under 16 years who were involved and monetized social media content for these children, parents had to ask an administrative authorization to the authorities and they had to check whether the child's well being was not harmed if it doesn't put too much pressure on the child. And also part of the income needs to be deposited in a separate bank account to make sure that the child gets the money that is earned. And this regulation is now also in a few states in the US but not in all countries. Also in Belgium, it's not clearly regulated yet. And there is also a huge difference for the children involved in parenting influencer content. So parents who talk about parenting and show their children in that content, not only in the non sponsored content, but also in the sponsored content, children are often shown what happens with the money. Then because it's the parents who talks about parenting, it's not directed to children, which is the case with child influencers. It's children that create content directed to other children. With parent influencers, you have more an adult audience and children are not the main character in the content, but still they are endorsed and they had to perform. So what happens then with the money? Then it becomes more difficult and more complex.
- [31:05]
B
The world of influencer marketing continues to develop and become more sophisticated over time, reaching children and adolescents and affecting their behavior. What can and should parents do to reduce these negative impacts of influencers on children and adolescents?
- [31:24]
A
What we also see in our research is that it's often an individualized activity. Children have their own tablets, some also have their own smartphones that they use to watch social media content. And parents are busy with household course, so they don't have time to watch together with the children. And we think that this is really important, that you know as a parent what your children are watching, what they are seeing online, what is talked about, what things they see. So I think it's very important that you as a parent sometimes sit next to the child and watch the videos together to see what they are seeing and to be able to actively mediate content, explain some topics that are addressed. So that's a very important aspect. And then of course, discuss with the child now and then what a business model, for instance, is of influencing. Why are brands paying influencers? So that you can also educate them about advertising literacy, media literacy, explaining about algorithms, why are you seeing certain videos? I think that there is an important role for parents.
- [32:34]
B
You bring up so many of the steps parents can take to help protect their children. But it would be a lot easier to do that if there were policies or regulations. You mentioned some that are in place, particularly in Europe, not as many in the United States that help families cope with the impact of influencers and their sponsors on the developing child. So can you think of other policies and regulations that we need to ensure that less of this falls on the parent and more of it's falling at the streamer level, the platform level, the product level?
- [33:12]
A
Yeah, I think it's a shared responsibility. Not only parents can be held responsible, but also platforms should do more to make their platforms healthy. For instance, do something about all the misinformation that is spread on their platforms. Make sure that there are clear disclosures about what content is made by AI, for instance, what content can be harmful. Give parents and children, adolescents also tools to make it more easy to regulate the content that they are seeing, that they can select certain things that they do not want to see that can be unhealthy. Also do something about the algorithms and make it more easy to quit social media instead of sending all these notifications to keep people on social media that they also can quit. So I think platforms are already working on these things now, of course, but I think there is a huge responsibility there. But also in schools, governments can also help children, educate them about media literacy, help parents to educate their children. Because for parents, social media are also not that easy to work with, to critically reflect on. So parents should also be educated to help their children better to cope with that content.
- [34:28]
B
What do you think still needs to be understood and studied when it comes to social media influencing and child health?
- [34:38]
A
So I think it's very important to do the research in a longitudinal way to see how social media impacts children and adolescents, how they experience it in their lives. We did a study with adolescents on TikTok and we see that it can also be educational, that it can teach them about new products and brands, about what stores they can use to do good deals. They also use this social media to check the trustworthiness of things. They check the comment sections, for instance. So they are not really only passive users who are very vulnerable. They can also be active and critical. So I think this needs to be studied well before taking any decisions on bans of social media. And in Europe, there are some countries who are now raising the age limit for social media for adolescents. But I think more research is needed to really see how children experience it and what are the long term impacts. Also, for Content creators for kidfluencers. For instance, there are a lot of discussions about these child labor laws, but how our children experience it. Often children do not get a voice in this discussion. So I think that that is also an important aspect. And then another thing that is important to investigate is the use of artificial intelligence and how this impacts content creation, how people can detect videos that are fake. I think that will be an important thing as well.
- [36:08]
B
I mean, you. You spend a huge amount of your time studying the way influencers impact what we think, what we buy. Do you find that it is still difficult for you to resist the temptation to do something an influencer has asked you to do or tried to get you to think you should do?
- [36:30]
A
Yeah, I think I, I don't mind because I, I like this content and it's very entertaining and I'm aware that I'm possibly influen, but I'm also aware I know what things I need to look at to know when I'm persuaded and why. So, yeah, I don't mind.
- [36:51]
B
And do you think that AI might reduce power of human influencers?
- [36:58]
A
A difficult question. It helps influencers making their copy, for instance. It can help you make better videos. So it can definitely be a supportive tool. On the other hand, you see that virtual influencers can maybe replace some human influencers because they have unlimited time. They can be everywhere, so they can promote much more brands because everything is done digitally. So they have much more opportunities and they don't have any limitations that human influencers have. But on the other hand, it can feel a bit strange. It's the uncanny Valley effect that people are referring to. So it can feel a bit uncomfortable if the virtual influencers look like humans, but then you detect that they are not humans. So they can be less persuasive because of that. So I think there will be a place for human influencers, definitely.
- [37:58]
B
Thank you, Lise, a lot for helping us better understand how influencer culture and advertising shape children's perceptions and behavior and what that means for families navigating today's digital world. If you'd like to learn more about the research discussed in this episode or explore evidence based resources for families, visit childrenandscreens.org and if you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing to Screen Deep or sharing it with someone who's thinking carefully about children, technology and mental health. I'm Chris Perry. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Screen Deep.
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Sam.