A new study reveals that kid influencers are unfortunately promoting unhealthy food brands on YouTube, making the fight to get children to eat better even tougher
Aayu and Pihu take the junk food challenge that involves eating chips, ice cream, gulab jamun and pizza with a toothpick
SIBLINGS Kanha and Mishti excitedly face the camera as their mother films them doing the activity for the day. Her wave from behind the lens is their cue for the banter to continue. The duo has to devour all the surprise junk food put before them on a platter. The Catch 22 situation, however, is the strange cutlery they ought to use in order to cross the finish line. Toothpicks for noodles, spoon for pizza, and such. Featured in their YouTube uploads as part of "challenge" videos, they eat everything from chips and chocolate to ice cream and burgers. Their channel, Kanha Mishti Rocks, has 1.05K subscribers.
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Kid influencers—children whose parents film them doing 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 allow their children to watch these videos, a new study has highlighted. A review of 418 videos from the five most popular kid influencer channels on YouTube found that nearly 43 per cent included promotion of food and drink items—more than 90 per cent of which was considered unhealthy branded food, drinks, and fast food.
The research, conducted by the New York University School of Global Public Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said the YouTube videos that featured unhealthy food and drink—representing 178 of the 418 videos reviewed—had been viewed more than one billion times in the aggregate.
Aayu and Pihu’s video on homefood versus junk food challenge is popular
"Kids already see several thousand food commercials on television every year, and these videos make it tougher for parents to help them eat a nutritious diet," says study senior author Marie Bragg, PhD, assistant professor of public health nutrition at NYU School of Global Public Health, and assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health. "We need a digital media environment that supports healthy eating instead of discouraging it," Braggs warns.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, focused on videos from the five most popular influencers among viewers aged three to 14 years. The influencers also fell in the same age group. The most popular of these peer influencer channels included in the study was Ryan's World, which in 2020 had nearly 27 million subscribers and features videos of Texas-born Ryan Kaji performing science
experiments, craft play, exercises, and eating.
While the study focused on young influencers in the US, the reality is not any different in India. Thane-based Pari Patil has half a dozen chocolate challenge videos on her channel, Pari's Lifestyle. Started in 2018, it enjoys a subscriber base of 4.34 million. Lokhandwala twins, Ayu and Anu, have one of the highest views for their junk food VS home food challenge videos. "We mostly do educational videos only. The idea is to influence other kids to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The particular junk food videos, in fact, urge children to not go for highly-processed items. My daughters ensure this message is sent out in their videos," says Santosh Upadhyay, Ayu and Anu's father.
Nisha Singhania
Online advertising spend by food and beverage brands in India stood at US$73 million at the end of 2015, accounting for 6.7 per cent of total online advertising. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world and is a popular destination for kids seeking entertainment. Nisha Singhania, who runs the creative agency Infectious Advertising and is a member of the Consumer Complaints Council at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), says,"Brands are using digital mediums since they are finding their audience, which is children in this case, on these platforms. Whether it is ethical or not to make them promote unhealthy food is a different issue altogether."
The NYU researchers feel that the allure of YouTube may be especially strong in 2020 as many parents are working remotely and have to juggle the challenging task of having young kids at home because of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns. Aayushi Lakhapati, nutritionist and co-founder of healthcare venture 23BMI, says, "Brands are targeting children to promote junk food to take advantage of their cognitive limitations. Once their products are advertised through a kid influencer, it's likely that they will nag their parents to buy junk food and beverages. This can lead to huge profits."
Aayushi Lakhapati
Lakhapati thinks that this age group should be left out of promoting processed food. "Viewer parents can get the YouTube Kids App for their children, where they have laid a complete ban on direct advertisements of junk food and beverages. Apart from this, parents should keep a close eye, watching the media their kids access, and making their own appraisals. They can also request the parents of kid influencers [through the comments section] to advertise healthy food on their channels. Another tip for parents is to find influencers promoting healthy food and lifestyle, and subscribe to only their channels."
"If our committee receives a complaint against an ad, we evaluate it and get back to the marketer to either take it down or ask them to substantiate why they are doing it. However, ours is a self-regulatory body. Advertisers and marketers need to self-regulate because while sales are important, building a brand on misusing kids is unacceptable," Singhania adds.
Piyush Kalra
When Kota-based Piyush Kalra, 40, was struck by the idea of launching a YouTube channel catering to Hindi-speaking kids in India, the goal was simple—promoting informative and fun content to keep children engaged during free time. His daughter Pihu was nine, and son Aayu was two-and-a-half years old then. "My wife Ruchi and the kids jumped at the idea. There was a dearth of Hindi videos for kids back then. But when we started in 2017, we didn't know the channel's popularity would reach where it has. Today, we are nearing 10 million subscribers, the highest for any kid influencer in India," says Kalra.
On Aayu and Pihu's channel, you will find videos that promote major brands like Byju's, Asian Paints, Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures. One of their most popular videos to date is the standard home food versus junk food challenge. Kalra defends the idea, however, by arguing that none of these food challenge videos are in collaboration with brands. "They eat homemade burgers and pizzas. You might see a couple of Cadbury and Hersheys videos, but that cannot be classified as junk food.
Even if we make fast food videos, we tell our viewers that it is okay to consume such food within limits. We don't actively encourage it," Kalra adds.
Whether or not mass chocolate brands qualify as junk food is an individual decision to make, Singhania feels. "Every parent will have a strong perspective on junk food. Some parents ensure that every morsel their kids eat is healthy. Some others want to maintain a balance. A few parents might not see anything wrong in the children eating processed foods. To me, anything that causes harm to the child's health is bad food. The quantity in which it is consumed is something that the parents need to address."
Lakhapati stresses that to meet a child's physical and mental growth needs, balanced nutrition is critical. It will affect them for life. "Junk food consumption can make the child crave more unhealthy foods laden with salt, sugar, and unhealthy fat. This can increase their junk food intake over time, upping their risk of developing childhood obesity, which could later trigger lifestyle diseases like hypertension, high cholesterol, PCOD, and type 2 diabetes. What you eat also impacts cognitive capacities and hormonal balance. For instance, bones and muscle development can be affected. Nutritional deficiencies also mean lowered immunity," Lakhapati adds.
What we’d like to see kid influencers promote instead
- Fresh fruit and vegetables
- Dairy products, probiotic-rich foods like yogurt
- Healthy snacks and homemade drinks instead of highly processed, packaged eats
- Superfoods like sweet potato, jaggery, makhana, and desi ghee
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Nisha Singhania, who runs the creative agency Infectious Advertising and is a member of the Consumer Complaints Council at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), says,
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