My feed is what I eat? A qualitative study on adolescents' awareness and appreciation of food marketing on social media

BackgroundAdolescents spend much of their time online and hence are exposed to a lot of non-core (energy-dense, nutrient-poor) social media food marketing (SMFM). This may influence their dietary choices and health. This present study aimed to investigate adolescents' perceptions towards SMFM; that is, their recognition and appreciation of SMFM.MethodsSemi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted with Dutch adolescents aged 13-16 years (n = 16), on Skype. Examples of food promotions on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube were discussed with adolescents.ResultsAdolescents' reasons for recognising and appreciating or liking SMFM were often related to the level of product integration. Factors that determined participants' recognition of SMFM included product focus (e.g., brand or product prominence), sponsorship disclosure, type of content (paid, influencer and peer-generated content) and promotional strategy (e.g., discounts, promotional texts, layout). Participants' appreciation of SMFM was determined by the format of a post (image, video, text, pop-up), trustworthiness of the source (brand, celebrity, friend/peer), type of product promoted (core, non-core) and appearance or layout of a post (e.g., professionalism, appeal).ConclusionsThe present study contributes to the ongoing debate on how to increase adolescents' resilience to commercial messages that promote non-core foods. Adolescents mostly enjoy watching non-core video content from peers or influencers and do not perceive this as food marketing. It is recommended that future studies investigate the effects of earned social media marketing formats (i.e., unpaid peer and influencer endorsements) promoting non-core foods on adolescents' dietary intake, and how they can be made more critical towards such types of SMFM. Most adolescents prefer watching unhealthy, entertaining influencer video content, but they often do not perceive this type of content as food marketing. It is recommended that future research and policies focus on strategies to enhance adolescents' defence mechanisms against such tempting and highly integrated food endorsements. image Adolescents mostly identify social media food marketing based on product prominence. Sponsorship disclosure in social media is not always recognised by adolescents. Trust is a key determinant for adolescents' appreciation of social media food posts. Adolescents prefer seeing unhealthy social media food promotions. Adolescents like earned social media food content but do not perceive it as marketing.