According to a new study from psychologists and health scientists at New York University, Black adolescents are more interested in food influencers who look like them, and this visual interest is associated with stronger social media engagement and preferences for unhealthy food.
“Adolescence is a critical period for social modeling,” said lead author Emily Balcetis, associate professor of psychology at NYU. “When influencers share those identities, they grab attention, and as a result, signal what people like their followers do, value, and eat.”
The study consisted of two experiments. To start, the authors recruited a sample of more than 500 Black and White teenagers. The participants were shown images of an adolescent or young adult social media influencer endorsing a product, either a food snack or a non-food product. The study participants were then asked to assess how “cool, attractive, and interesting” the influencer was and how likely they were to engage with the influencer’s post. Participants were also shown pairs of 20 snacks (one healthy and one unhealthy) that appeared on screen side by side and then asked to choose which snack they would like to eat.
Black participants found posts from Black influencers more interesting than posts from White influencers. When posts included unhealthy foods, participants who reported greater visual interest — which occurred among Black teens more than among White teens — were more likely to choose unhealthy snacks. Among White participants, there was no significant effect of racial congruity on their visual interest.
To determine if their findings held true for other teenagers of color, the authors then recruited nearly 900 Black, White, Hispanic, and East Asian participants and conducted the same experiment. Compared to their initial findings regarding Black teenagers, the authors found similar results among Hispanic and East Asian teenagers. Additionally, the authors again found no significant effect of influencer racial congruity on visual interest among White adolescents.
“At a time when adolescents are exposed to social media food marketing on a daily basis, this research identifies visual interest as a key mechanism linking racially targeted marketing to unhealthy food preferences,” said Dr. Balcetis.
