Are Social Media, Youtube stars encouraging kids to eat more calories?

A new study has found that social media celebrities or social-media influencers such as YouTube stars are most likely to be encouraging youngsters and kids to be intaking more calories. We are in an age where both- those who are busy working professionals having made their lives and even those who are of a young, impressionable age- seem to be heavily in the arrest of social media.

What ‘they’ say and ‘seem’ to be doing matters a lot, instead of it being widely thought-through. Celebrities keep making lasting impressions on our mind and what they seem to be doing in their everyday lives- whether on professional front or personal front- tends to have a lot of impact on our psyches.

We are no longer in an age where common modes of social media communication are through blogs and blogs alone. Popular culture websites and informative blogs are spreaders of viral content. But nothing beats the virality that stuff like vlogs brings. This truly is an age of vlogs. Our heroes aren’t just the ones who strut an electronic guitar stylishly. Rather, heroes are increasingly those figures who can hold an audiences’ attention for a prolonged period of time, tellers of stories, writers of travelogues and describers of magnificent, alluring tales that touch our lives from various standpoints of ‘chasing one’s dreams’, ‘going after the unknown’, ‘being independent and creative’ and, ‘narrators of grit and wisdom’.

That said, with such profound influencers around, it isn’t hard to understand why young, fragile minds who may or may not know what’s good for them, what’s right for them, end up listening into what the social-media stars have to say. Social media is the stage standing on which you can sell an onion at the price of a pearl, isn’t it? There are some interesting numbers that researchers throw.

Children who are influenced by the social media stars such as popular vloggers may end up eating 26% more junk food that those who don’t follow any vloggers as such. The need to follow someone is big and the craving to be part of some form of popular culture- even bigger. And this is just the beginning. Some social media stars used in the said study were Zoella, who has 10.9 million followers on Instagram, and Alfie Deyes, who has 4.6 million.

Another rising trend that seemingly might’ve added on to the trend of following a social-media celeb seems to point in the direction of food vloggers. Remember, it’s not food bloggers anymore. It’s food vloggers. According to the findings of the new social media study, those kids who had been a witness to a series of junk food images or imagery consumed somewhere close to 448 calories- on account of a greater exposure to social media stars- than those who weren’t.

This study factored in the responses and actions of as many as 176 kids who had been slotted into different categories. The different food articles they were picked to eat and select included- carrot sticks, chocolates, jelly sweets et cetera.

The trend nowadays is to be closely following what social media stars recommend or follow. If someone insists on trying a new ‘chocolate mousse at an XYZ eatery in Southern California’ (as an instance) using expressions like it’s ‘simply out of this world and stuff to die for, then most likely, young, innocent minds who seek in these people an outright inspiration are more likely to do so’.