IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v10y2022i1p136-145.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Obesogenic Features of Food-Related Content Aimed at Children on YouTube

Author

Listed:
  • Victoria Tur-Viñes

    (Department of Communication and Social Psychology, University of Alicante, Spain)

  • Araceli Castelló‐Martínez

    (Department of Communication and Social Psychology, University of Alicante, Spain)

  • Cecilia Barrilero-Carpio

    (Department of Communication and Social Psychology, University of Alicante, Spain)

Abstract

Obesity, and particularly childhood obesity, is considered an epidemic by the WHO because of the health problems it causes and its impact on the lives and environment of those who suffer from it. In this article, the term “obesogenic features” refers to the set of supposedly aggravating risk factors that could intensify the proven effect on minors of exposure to food-related media content. The article explores the characteristics of food-related content in YouTube videos aimed at children, with the objective of identifying videos that pose a high risk due to the presence of obesogenic arguments, as well as videos with innovative media trends. It presents an exploratory study of 293 videos (22 hr 41 min) aimed at children and containing food and/or food brands, posted from May 2020 to April 2021 on 28 YouTube channels of food brands and child YouTubers with the largest numbers of subscribers. Child YouTubers often appear to explicitly promote calorie intake as a diet alternative and to disseminate content in which the presence of low-nutrition foods undermines childhood obesity prevention policies. The sensitivity of this target audience and the highly emotional nature of the formats in which messages with obesogenic features appear, such as “challenges,” point to an urgent need to adopt ethical standards and legal measures to regulate such content.

Suggested Citation

  • Victoria Tur-Viñes & Araceli Castelló‐Martínez & Cecilia Barrilero-Carpio, 2022. "Obesogenic Features of Food-Related Content Aimed at Children on YouTube," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(1), pages 136-145.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:1:p:136-145
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v10i1.4684
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/4684
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v10i1.4684?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:1:p:136-145. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.