Toward an Understanding of Parental Views and Actions on Social Media Influencers Targeted at Adolescents: The Roles of Parents’ Social Media Use and Empowerment

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that adolescents are spending significant amounts of time on social media. Brands are taking advantage of this fact and actively using social media to reach adolescent consumers, primarily via social media influencers. Adolescents consider the sponsored brand posts by social media influencers to be trustworthy and honest, thus reducing their critical evaluation of the ads. While several researchers have pointed to the critical role that parents play in their adolescents becoming digitally literate and empowered, there is little understanding of parental views and drivers of parental views on social media influencers and means by which they mediate their adolescents’ exposure to social media influencers. Our specific research questions are the following: (a) How does parents’ use of social media relate to their attitudes toward and mediation of social media influencers? (b) What is the role of psychological empowerment in enabling the relationship? Through a survey of approximately 200 mothers of adolescents (between the ages of 11 and 17 years), we examine how parents’ social media usage (active or passive) is related to their views toward social media influencers and mediation of social media influencers. We find that active (vs. passive) use of social media by parents led them to significantly (vs. not significantly) mediate social media influencers’ impact. Passive (vs. active) use of social media led to parents having a significant (vs. not significant) positive view of social media influencers. We explain this direct relationship by the level and kind of psychological empowerment (intrapersonal or interactional) that a parent experiences. Intrapersonal empowerment is related to self-efficacy, perceived competence, and desire for control, whereas interactional empowerment is related to an individual’s engagement in collective action and interactions with others. We find that active use of parental mediation increases intrapersonal empowerment resulting in parental mediation of social media influencers but has no effect on their positive or negative views on social media influencers. Moreover, passive use of social media results in interactional empowerment but has no significant impact on parental mediation but is related to positive views of social media influencers. Implications for regulators, practitioners, and parents are then discussed.

“Wasn't Even on My Radar”: Increasing Parental Mediation of Influencer Marketing Behaviors in 35 Minutes with a Brief Theory of Planned Behavior Informed Online Randomized Controlled Intervention

“…One particular shortcoming of recent marketing literacy studies is that they have primarily investigated the influence of school-based interventions and, to a lesser extent, parental explanations about marketing. However, research has shown that parental mediation can increase children's knowledge and understanding of marketing because parents more than educators can intervene on marketing exposure with higher frequency and higher contextspecify (De Pauw et al, 2019;Hudders & Cauberghe, 2018;Lin et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2017;Pearce & Baran, 2018). Consequently, interventions targeting the improvement of parental mediation for marketing could be a highly valuable area of research.…”

“…Most research of parental mediation in the context of marketing and advertising was conducted for traditional ads, such as television (Bijmolt et al, 1998;Buijzen & Mens, 2007;Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003b;Robertson, 1979;Vijayalakshmi et al, 2019), and movies (Hudders & Cauberghe, 2018;Hudson et al, 2008;Naderer et al, 2018). More recently, studies on parental mediation in new marketing and advertising formats are slowly emerging, such as for advergames (Evans, 2014;Evans et al, 2013;Evans & Hoy, 2016), social network games , online advertising (Cornish, 2014;Kowalczyk & Royne, 2016;Vijayalakshmi et al, 2018) and influencer marketing (Evans et al, 2018;Lin et al, 2019;Lou & Kim, 2019). Most parental marketing mediation studies focus on mediation as the explanatory and explained variable, while less focus on it as the outcome variable.…”

“…Studies have collected evidence on variables that could explain the intensity of parental mediation (continues variable) and the type of mediation used by the parent (categorical variables, such as active vs. restrictive) (Dens et al, 2007;Lin et al, 2019) (Kowalczyk & Royne, 2016;Lin et al, 2019).…”

“…In contrast, parent-targeted interventions do not have these shortcomings and, as a result, can be considerably more important for researchers and policymakers. Compared to schools or teachers, parents have more opportunities and time to influence the child's 2 media diet directly and educate their children with higher frequency and higher context-specificity by discussing the marketing the child actually sees daily (Chen & Shi, 2019;De Pauw et al, 2019;Hudders & Cauberghe, 2018;Lin et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2017;Pearce & Baran, 2018). As a result, the research on interventions for parental mediation of new forms of marketing is highly important.…”

“…In contrast, parent-targeted interventions that increase the parental intentions to engage in behaviors that increase marketing-related knowledge and the skills of children before middle adulthood do not have these shortcomings and, as a result, can be considerably more important for researchers and policymakers (De Pauw et al, 2019;Isaac & Grayson, 2019;Jung & Heo, 2019;Youn & Shin, 2019). Compared to school-based interventions, parents have more opportunities and time to influence the media diet directly and educate them with higher frequency and higher context-specificity by daily discussing the marketing their children actually engage with (Chen & Shi, 2019;Lin et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2017). As a result, the research on interventions for parental mediation of new forms of marketing is highly important.…”