Longitudinal relations between exposure to YouTube influencer videos and Dutch teenagers’ materialism and advertised product desire

The popularity of influencer content on social media has made parents and caretakers concerned about the potential effects it may have on their children. They recognize that their children look up to influencers and feel closely connected to them, as well as that these influencers seem to induce a desire for the products and wealth on display. The presumed causality between children’s consumption of YouTube influencer videos, wishful identification, parasocial relation, advertised product desire, and materialism, however, had not been investigated prior to this study. We collected two-wave survey panel data among 218 12- to 15-year-olds to examine media effects and processes by zooming in on the cross-lagged relations between the aforementioned variables. Our findings reveal that children’s consumption of YouTube influencer videos increases advertised product desire three months later. Interestingly, rather than being affected by it, materialism predicts and increases children’s consumption of YouTube influencer videos, as well as advertised product desire and wishful identification. Finally, children’s perceived parasocial relation also drives the consumption of YouTube influencer videos. Hence, certain presumed media and process variables may, in fact, function as media selection variables, providing an alternative explanation for the positive correlations found cross-sectionally.