Marketing and Consumerism - Special Issues for Tweens and Teens
No longer little children and not yet teens, tweens are starting to develop their sense of identity and are anxious to cultivate a sophisticated self-image. Meanwhile, marketers are discovering there’s lots of money to be made by treating tweens like teenagers: while they only have moderate spending power, they have the same influence on household purchases as young teens.[1]
By treating pre-adolescents as independent, mature consumers, marketers have been very successful in removing the gatekeepers (parents) from the picture—leaving tweens vulnerable to potentially unhealthy messages about body image, sexuality, relationships and violence.
Marketing “cool” to teens
“This generation is programmed to ignore ads. They scroll right through it. So because of that we believe in a grassroots approach. Followers is not something we even look at. We focus on how involved they will be.”[2]
(Shai Eisenman, founder of Bubble Skincare)
According to No Logo author Naomi Klein, in the 1990s corporations discovered that the youth market was able and willing to pay top dollar in order to be “cool.” The corporations have been chasing the elusive cool factor ever since. Young people turn to social media over any other source for style inspiration, and while young people are skeptical of obvious brand messages, they rely on influencers for endorsements and recommendations.[3] In many cases, these aren’t celebrities but otherwise ordinary young women – “normal girls with small followings who can help get the word out” – who don’t even need to name the brands they’re wearing or using because someone is guaranteed to ask them to identify it in the comments.[4] The ultimate goal is to present a “shoppable life” in which “yes, the content was sponsored, but only because it was a natural extension of their lives.”[5]
Body image and advertising
It’s difficult for teens to develop healthy attitudes towards sexuality and body image when much of the advertising aimed at them is filled with images of impossibly thin, fit, beautiful and highly sexualized young people. The underlying marketing message is that there is a link between physical beauty and sex appeal—and popularity, success and happiness. The move from professional models to influencers hasn’t reduced the pressure to look good: advertisers are clear that influencers need to be attractive to sell a product – while being “authentic” at the same time.[6] Many teens are aware of this mix of artifice and authenticity, but “although they are aware of the certain unreality in the representations of influencers, this does not diminish their desire to achieve that image.”[7]
Not surprisingly, ads promising to make teens thinner or more muscular are extremely common: 40 percent of 14-17-year-olds have seen ads for weight loss drugs, while one in four have seen ads for steroids or similar drugs that promise to build muscle mass.[8] Many of these ads are explicitly aimed at teens, even encouraging them to “tell your parents they’re vitamins.”[9] Body image concerns can mean that teens actually become more vulnerable to some advertising messages, as they become more conscious of their status among their peers and more keen to be like the influencers they admire.[10]
Packaging girlhood and boyhood
As they make the transition from childhood to the teenage years, tweens (ages eight to 12) are continually bombarded with limiting media stereotypes on what it is to be a girl or a boy in today’s world. This “packaged childhood” is sold to them through ads and products; and across all media, from television, music, movies and magazines to video games and the internet.
If you believe the media messages aimed at kids, tween girls are mini-fashionistas who are pretty and sexy and obsessed with boys, friends, shopping, pop stars and celebrities; tween boys are independent and strong, and preoccupied with sports, video games, adventure, cars, music and hanging out with friends.
Young girls in particular are targeted by marketers. The focus of these ads – beauty, sexuality, relationships and consumerism – is worrisome for parents. According to Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, authors of Packaging Girlhood, images of girls as “sexy, diva, boy-crazy shoppers” can be quite harmful to their self-development. At an age when girls “could be developing skills, talents, and interests that will serve them well their whole life, they are being enticed into a dream of specialness through pop stardom and sexual objectivity.”[11]
Media stereotypes of boys are no less harmful: they are nearly always presented as “tough guys” and, as with girls, there is a consistent emphasis on their physical appearance. Boys are often targeted by products which promise to make them more masculine but – as in the case of steroids or “hard gum,” which is supposed to produce a chiseled jawline – can do significant harm.[12] Men and women both dislike stereotyped portrayals of any gender in advertising, but advertisers continue to rely on them anyway.[13]
Marketing adult ads to kids
The marketing of adult entertainment to children has been an ongoing issue between government regulators and various media industries. In a report released in 2000, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took movie, music and video games industries to task for routinely marketing violent entertainment to young children. Subsequent reports have shown that although advances have been made – particularly within the video game industry – there are still many outstanding concerns relating to the frequency that adult-oriented entertainment is marketed to children and the ease with which many youth are able to access adult-rated games, movies and music. [14] Specific areas where the FTC is calling on entertainment media to improve on include restricting the marketing of mature-rated products to children, clearly and prominently disclosing rating information and restricting children’s access to mature-rated products at retail.[15]
This is especially relevant in the emerging world of YouTube and content creators. In a 2019 statement, the FTC asked creators whether their “content is directed to children?” They then reminded creators of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule enacted in 1998, which protects children under the age of 13 online.[16] As of 2021, however, Facebook allowed advertisers to target users as young as 13 with ads for alcohol, gambling and online dating services.[17] Kids are not only exposed to inappropriate ads online, though. Studies have found that TV viewers “are exposed to gambling advertisements about three times a minute during a sports broadcast.”[18]
Online ads are also often misleading. One study found that influencers ads for prescription drugs contained misinformation about the drugs’ effects and were also difficult to recognize as ads.[19] Other ads are simply offensive, such as ads for men’s undershirts that make light of gender-based violence; in 2024 Ad Standards Council asked Amazon to remove or modify these, but as of 2025 the ads were still running.[20]
Teens may also see inappropriate content through “parasite search engine optimization,” in which legitimate websites – often ones specializing in sports or video game news – are bought and then turned into advertising markets for gambling sites or crypto currency.[21]
Self-commodification
One of the distinguishing features of networked media, such as social networking and video-sharing sites, is that the users provide most of the content. For many, this has led to a sense that using social media is a part of our jobs, or a job in itself: “Just like Instagram made everyone a photographer and Twitter made everyone an opinion columnist, the mere act of using social media has turned us all into creators, hustling for as many microtransactions on as many platforms as we can.”[22]
The importance of influencers in youth culture has led many young people to want to commodify themselves in the same way: six in 10 teens and young adults post unpaid brand-related content and 86 percent would be willing to post sponsored content if they were paid to do it.[23] One study found that the top career aspiration for kids ages five to seven was “YouTuber.”[24] Even if it isn’t a professional aspiration, tweens and teens enjoy being part of collective experiences – including ones that originate as marketing campaigns.[25]
While participating in social media can be an important form of self-expression for young people, in some cases leading to a career, it’s important for kids to understand the realities of making online media for money. YouTubers, TikTok stars, influencers and streamers all report harassment, health problems and pressure to constantly deliver new content – all of which can, of course, rob them of the enjoyment they originally took in making media.[26] Many countries – including Canada – have no specific regulation protecting “kidfluencers” from being exploited by adults who profit from their work.[27]
Particularly for girls, part of that is also a pressure to sexualize themselves. For would-be influencers, self-sexualization is often seen as a way or even a necessity to get attention not just from followers but from brands as well.[28] While some users are pressured to engage in literal sex work online,[29] the broader result is that social media post have developed “a fairly consistent pornified aesthetic”[30] that girls – and, increasingly, boys[31] – feel pressured to conform to.
Continue to next section
Parent resources
Teacher resources
[1] (2025) Fandoms & Passions: The Antidotes to Hyper-Fragmented Youth Audiences. SuperAwesome.
[2] Lieber, C. (2024) Teen Girls Are Spending Big She Tells Them What to Buy. The Wall Street Journal.
[3] (2025) Gen Z broke the marketing funnel. Vogue.
[4] Lieber, C. (2024) Teen Girls Are Spending Big She Tells Them What to Buy. The Wall Street Journal.
[5] Hund, Emily. (2023) The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Princeton University Press.
[6] Hund, Emily. (2023) The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Princeton University Press.
[7] Feijoo, B., & Vizcaíno-Verdú, A. (2024). To be fit, or not to be: How influencer-driven advertising reinforces idealized beauty standards in adolescents. Journal of Marketing Communications, 1-16.
[8] Bawden, A. (2026) Children in England bombarded with online ads for harmful products. The Guardian.
[9] Muldowney, D. (2023) TikTok Influencers Are Selling Body Building Drugs to Teens, Center for Countering Digital Hate Report Finds. The Daily Beast.
[10] Feijoo, B., & Vizcaíno-Verdú, A. (2024). To be fit, or not to be: How influencer-driven advertising reinforces idealized beauty standards in adolescents. Journal of Marketing Communications, 1-16.w
[11] Lamb, S., & Brown, L. M. (2007). Packaging girlhood: Rescuing our daughters from marketers' schemes. St. Martin's Press.
[12] Bregel, S. (2024) Gum brands are selling chiseled jawlines to teen boys on TikTok—and they're biting. Fast Company.
[13] Åkestam, N. (2017). Understanding advertising stereotypes: Social and brand-related effects of stereotyped versus non-stereotyped portrayals in advertising. Stockholm School of Economics.
[14] Federal Trade Commission (2009). FTC Renews Call to Entertainment Industry to Curb Marketing of Violent Entertainment to Children. http://www.narm.com/PDF/FTCReport_1209.pdf
[15] Ibid.
[16] Cohen K (2019) YouTube channel owners: Is your content directed to children? Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved from https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2019/11/youtube-channel-owners-your-content-directed-children
[17] Taylor, J. (2021) Facebook allows advertisers to target children interested in smoking, alcohol and weight loss. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/28/facebook-allows-advertisers-to-target-children-interested-in-smoking-alcohol-and-weight-loss
[18] McMillan D., McNair M.m Tomlinson A. (2024) Hey, sports fans: You spend up to 20% of every game watching gambling advertising. CBC News.
[19] Gell, S., Dave, S., Willis, E., Vitale, E. J., Woloshin, S., & Heiss, R. (2026). Prescription Drug Promotion by Social Media Influencers: A Systematic Scoping Review. JAMA Network Open, 9(3), e262738.
[20] Harris, S. (2025) 'Offensive' phrase still used for tank tops on Amazon, even though it violates Canada's advertising code. CBC News.
[21] Ryan, J. (2026) The Secretive Company Filling Video Game Sites With Gambling And AI. Aftermath.
[22] Jennings, R. (2021) The sexfluencers. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22749123/onlyfans-influencers-sex-work-instagram-pornography
[23] (2019) The Influencer Report: Engaging Gen Z and Millennials. Morning Consult.
[24] Peak, J. (2021) YouTube influencer tops job wishlist for children aged 5-7. Wigan Today. Retrieved from https://www.wigantoday.net/news/people/youtube-influencer-tops-job-wishlist-for-children-aged-5-7-3442272
[25] Litman, R. (2022) For Gen Z, Brand Is What You Share, Not What You Sell. Ogilvy.
[26] Needleman, S. (2021) Twitch Live-Streamers Say Playing Games is Hard Work. The Wall Street Journal.
[27] Dunne, J. (2025) Should kidfluencers be banned? That’s the plan in the EU. CBC News.
[28] Drenten, J., Gurrieri, L., & Tyler, M. (2020). Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention. Gender, Work & Organization, 27(1), 41-66.
[29] Jennings, R. (2021) The sexfluencers. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22749123/onlyfans-influencers-sex-work-instagram-pornography
[30] Drenten, J., Gurrieri, L., & Tyler, M. (2020). Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention. Gender, Work & Organization, 27(1), 41-66.
[31] Hawgood, A. (2022) What Is ‘Bigorexia’? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/style/teen-bodybuilding-bigorexia-tiktok.html