Effects of Food Depictions in Entertainment Media on Children's Unhealthy Food Preferences: Content Analysis Linked With Panel Data.

Background: Entertainment media content is often mentioned as one of the roots of children's unhealthy food consumption. This might be due to the high quantity of unhealthy foods presented in children's media environments. However, less is known about the role of the centrality of food placement, that is, whether foods are interacted with, consumed, verbally mentioned, or appear unobtrusively. We also lack longitudinal research measuring both children's unhealthy and healthy food consumption behaviors as outcomes. Objective: The aim is to connect content analytical data based on children's actual media diet with panel data in order to explain children's food preferences. Moreover, this study not only focuses on the amount of healthy and unhealthy foods children are exposed to, but also on how these foods are presented (ie, centrally or not). Furthermore, we looked at the question of how parental coviewing can diminish (or enhance) the effects of unhealthy (or healthy) food depictions, and we measured healthy and unhealthy consumption as dependent variables. Methods: We conducted a 2-wave panel study with children and one of their parents (of 2250 parents contacted, 829 responded, for a response rate of 36.84%; 648 valid cases, ie, parent-child pairs, were used for analysis), with 6 months between the 2 panel waves. We linked the 2-wave panel data for the children and their parents to content analytical data for movies (n=113) and TV series (n=134; 3 randomly chosen episodes per TV series were used) that children were exposed to over the course of 6 months. Results: There was no significant relationship between exposure to unhealthy food presentation and unhealthy (b=0.008; P=.07) or healthy (b=-0.003; P=.57) food consumption over time. Also, healthy food presentation was unrelated to unhealthy (b=0.009; P=.18) or healthy (b=0.000; P=.99) food consumption over time. However, there was a significant, positive interaction between unhealthy food presentation and presentation centrality on unhealthy food consumption (b=0.000; P=.03), suggesting that the effects of unhealthy food presentation rise with increasing levels of centrality. There was no interaction between unhealthy food presentation and presentation centrality on the consumption of healthy foods (b=0.000; P=.10). Also, exposure to healthy food presentation interacted with centrality (b=-0.001; P=.003). That is, when a healthy product was presented at maximum centrality, it led to less unhealthy food consumption in children. Coviewing did not interact with exposure to unhealthy foods when explaining unhealthy (b=0.003; P=.08) or healthy (b=-0.001; P=.70) food consumption. Conclusions: We conclude that simply presenting more healthy foods is not sufficient to combat children's unhealthy food preferences. Further regulations may be necessary with respect to representations of unhealthy foods in children's media.

What can stop the 'pester power'? A longitudinal study on the impact of children's audiovisual media consumption on media-motivated food purchase requests.

BACKGROUND: In modern audiovisual media, children are confronted with an endless stream of food advertising. Thus, companies can undermine parents' best efforts to feed their children healthy foods. Indeed, parents often describe that their children request specific foods depicted in media, most of which are high in fat, salt, and/or sugar. OBJECTIVES: Longitudinal research on the factors influencing media-motivated food purchase requests remains scarce. METHODS: In a panel study, pairing data of N = 529 children (6-11 years) and one of their parents (N = 529), we examined how children's individual factors (i.e., age and body mass index [BMI]), their audiovisual media consumption, and different parental mediation styles are associated with parents' perceptions of children's media-motivated food purchase requests. RESULTS: While age was negatively related and children's BMI positively related to children's media-motivated food purchase requests, we found no overall effect of children's audiovisual media consumption. Interestingly, talking with children about foods during or after viewing (i.e., conversation-oriented communication about foods depicted in media) increased media-motivated food purchase requests, most likely by fostering the cognitive availability of food products. Restrictive media mediation exerted a negative effect (i.e., reduced purchase requests). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that restricting exposure to food advertising in the media may be more powerful in stopping the 'pester power' than previously thought. Thus, policy-supporting restrictions on depicting unhealthy foods in media content targeted at children may be helpful.

You are not alone: Smartphone use, friendship satisfaction, and anxiety during the COVID-19 crisis.

Due to 'stay-at-home' measures, individuals increasingly relied on smartphones for social connection and for obtaining information about the COVID-19 pandemic. In a two-wave panel survey (N Time2 = 416), we investigated associations between different types of smartphone use (i.e., communicative and non-communicative), friendship satisfaction, and anxiety during the first lockdown in Austria. Our findings revealed that communicative smartphone use increased friendship satisfaction over time, validating how smartphones can be a positive influence in difficult times. Friendship satisfaction decreased anxiety after one month, signaling the importance of strong friendship networks during the crisis. Contrary to our expectations, non-communicative smartphone use had no effects on friendship satisfaction or anxiety over time. Reciprocal effects showed that anxiety increased both types of smartphone use over time. These findings are discussed in the context of mobile media effects related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Love in the Time of Corona: Predicting Willingness to Engage in Sexting During the First COVID-19-Related Lockdown.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, in early 2020, lockdowns limited the options for physical intimacy and many resorted to technology-mediated forms of intimacy such as sexting. However, it is unclear what predicted willingness to engage in sexting during the lockdown. The present study filled this gap by investigating COVID-19-related social isolation, privacy concerns, age, and gender as predictors of willingness to engage in sexting. We further examined an interaction of COVID-19-related social isolation and privacy concerns on willingness to engage in sexting. We conducted online surveys with 494 young adults (Study 1) and with a quota-based sample of 437 adults (Study 2) in Austria. In both studies, negative binomial regressions revealed a positive effect of COVID-19-related social isolation on willingness to engage in sexting. Privacy concerns hindered young adults in Study 1 from engaging in sexting but not relatively older adults in Study 2. However, in neither study did privacy concerns moderate the effect of COVID-19-related social isolation on willingness to engage in sexting: Even individuals with high privacy concerns were more willing to sext under conditions of social isolation, suggesting that the need for intimacy outweighed the need for privacy protection. Gender had no effect in either study, indicating that men and women used sexting to cope with the unprecedented COVID-19-related situation.

Shaping Healthy Eating Habits in Children With Persuasive Strategies: Toward a Typology.

There is an abundance of evidence that the presentation of unhealthy foods (UHFs) in different media has the power to shape eating habits in children. Compared to this rich body of work with regard to the effects of UHF presentations, studies testing the effects of healthy foods (HFs) are less conclusive. In particular, while the persuasive mechanisms behind HF presentations are well-understood, we lack insights about the role of messages factors, that is, how are (and should) HFs (be) presented in order to foster healthy eating habits in children. This paper tackles this research gap by suggesting the Persuasive Strategies Presenting Healthy Foods to Children (PSPHF) typology, classified along three pillars: (a) composition-related characteristics, (b) source-related characteristics, and (c) information-related characteristics. Against the background of the PSPHF typology, we review the available empirical evidence, outline pressing research gaps, and discuss implications for researchers, health promoters, and program planers.

"Context, Please?" The Effects of Appearance- and Health-Frames and Media Context on Body-Related Outcomes.

Promoting health-related behaviors such as healthy eating or doing sports are important to counteract the problem of obesity, which is on the rise. In this regard, initial studies suggest that appearance compared to health framing can lead to negative body-related outcomes in young women. This study aimed to extend these findings by investigating the role of the context. Furthermore, as previous studies focused on young women only, we considered a more diverse sample. This seems especially important as health campaigns focusing on healthy eating and sports should appeal to a more diverse population. This experimental study (N = 286) follows a 2 (appearance frame vs. health frame) × 2 (social media vs. magazine website) between-subjects design. Results revealed that exposure to appearance-focused framing led to a lower positive mood compared with exposure to health-focused framing. These effects were most prevalent in overweight and obese participants. Moreover, participants in the social media condition showed lower body satisfaction and lower positive mood compared with participants in the magazine website condition independent of the frame. No other interaction effects occured. Overall, health promoters should focus their campaigns on the health aspects of health-related behaviors and should consider promotion on social media platforms. Also, they should keep in mind that not only the framing, but also the context, might have effects on body-related outcomes.

Experts, peers, or celebrities? The role of different social endorsers on children's fruit choice.

This study investigates whether the source providing nutritional information matters for children's choice of fruit over candy. We conducted a between-subject experimental study with children (6-11 years; Mage = 8.20; N = 340). Children watched an audiovisual cartoon with nutritional messages provided by experts (expert condition), by celebrities (celebrity condition), or by typical consumers (peer condition). Additionally, we included a control group in which children were not exposed to any cartoon. As the dependent variable, we measured children's fruit choice over candy. As a mediator, measuring message processing we included children's argument awareness. Children's age was included as a moderator. The results indicate that the experimental conditions were equally effective in creating argument awareness for healthy eating compared to the control group. Children's argument awareness was generally rather low, and it did not influence children's fruit choice over candy. Nevertheless, there was a direct effect of the expert condition on children's fruit choice, pointing to an internalized "expert heuristic". No moderating effects of children's age were present. Our study indicates that using experts to present nutritional information within narrative media content is a potentially successful strategy to create argument awareness for healthy food and to impact children's selection of healthy food whereas peer and celebrity social endorsers are not.

Fiction Is Sweet. The Impact of Media Consumption on the Development of Children's Nutritional Knowledge and the Moderating Role of Parental Food-Related Mediation. A Longitudinal Study.

Nutritional knowledge is an important cognitive facilitator that potentially helps children to follow a healthy diet. Two main information agents influence children's development of nutritional knowledge: the media and their parents. While a high amount of media consumption potentially decreases children's nutritional knowledge, parents may shape the amount of information children can gather about nutrition through their food-related mediation styles. In addition, children's individual preconditions predict how children can process the provided nutritional information. This two-wave panel study with children (N = 719; 5-11 years) and their parents (N = 719) investigated the main effects and interplay of children's amount of media consumption and their parents' food-related mediation styles by performing linear regression analysis. Children's individual preconditions were also considered. We measured children's self-reported amount of media consumption, children's age, sex, weight, and height (BMI). Additionally, in a parent survey we asked parents about how they communicate their rules about eating while especially focusing on active and restrictive food rule communication styles. As a dependent measure, we examined children's nutritional knowledge at Time 1 and 2. The results show that the amount of media consumption has a negative effect on children's nutritional knowledge over time. Parents' restrictive or active food-related mediation asserted no main effects and could not lever out the negative effect of the amount of media consumption. Therefore, we argue that parents should limit children's amount of media consumption to avoid the manifestation of misperceptions about nutrition.

The effects of gain- and loss-framed nutritional messages on children's healthy eating behaviour.

OBJECTIVE: Despite extensive research on framing effects in public health communication, there is still a lack of knowledge on how gain frames v. loss frames can encourage healthy eating behaviour among children. DESIGN: Drawing on the Prospect Theory as well as on the Reactivity of Embedded Food Cues in Advertising Model, an experiment exposed children to an audio-visual cartoon movie with gain-framed nutritional messages about eating fruit (gain condition), loss-framed nutritional messages about eating fruit (loss condition) or a message without any food (control group). Children's fruit intake was measured as the dependent variable. Children's awareness of gain- and loss-framed arguments was treated as mediators, while children's age and parents' self-reported food-related mediation styles were modelled as moderators. SETTING: Vienna, Austria, in 2018. PARTICIPANTS: Children aged 6-10 years (N 161). RESULTS: Children in the gain frame group were more aware of gain-framed arguments, and children in the loss frame group were more aware of loss-framed arguments than those in the control group. However, only the mediator awareness of gain-framed arguments increased fruit intake. Additionally, there was a direct effect of the gain-framed message on fruit intake compared to the control group. The loss condition did not reveal such an effect. Neither parent's food-related mediation styles nor children's age moderated those results. CONCLUSION: Gain-framing seems to be more effective in influencing children's healthy food choices compared to loss-framing. Implications for health communication strategies aimed at children are discussed.

A "Forbidden Fruit Effect": An Eye-Tracking Study on Children's Visual Attention to Food Marketing.

Obesity in children is an international health concern. Against this background, there is an increasing interest in understanding how healthy and unhealthy food marketing in narrative media can affect children. In particular, children's implicit reactions, such as visual attention and emotional arousal, are far from being sufficiently understood. We conducted an eye-tracking study, presenting children one of two versions of a narrative media-stimulus, either presenting an unhealthy food (i.e., candy condition; N = 34), or a healthy food (i.e., fruit condition; N = 34). As dependent variables, we investigated dwell time (i.e., visual attention) and pupil dilation (i.e., emotional arousal). As moderators, we included children's prohibition of candy at home and children's level of BMI in our models. Our results indicate that mean dwell time did not differ between conditions and that the moderators did not exert any effect. Moreover, pupil dilation did not differ between conditions but was moderated by parents' candy prohibition at home (ηp2 = 0.080). The results show that children who are not allowed to consume candy at home react with higher emotional arousal when exposed to candy placements than children allowed to eat candy at home. Thus, depending on children's contextual factors, children react differently to unhealthy food cues.

Food as an eye-catcher. An eye-tracking study on Children's attention to healthy and unhealthy food presentations as well as non-edible objects in audiovisual media.

BACKGROUND: Food presentations within media content are often made responsible for todays' obesity epidemic. This assessment is based on the assumption that food presentations create cue reactivity, which in turn affects the amount of food intake. OBJECTIVE: This study investigates children's implicit reactions (cue reactivity) toward healthy, unhealthy, and non-ediblel objects. METHODS: We conducted an experimental eye-tracking study comparing children's cue reactivity assessed with visual attention toward healthy and unhealthy food presentations, as well as non-edible objects. We controlled for the role of children's hunger, body mass index (BMI), and age. RESULTS: Results indicated no difference between healthy and unhealthy food presentations, yet food generally aroused more visual attention in children compared to non-edible objects. Explicit memory for the embedded foods or objects was mediated through visual attention. However, unhealthy food presentations also directly affected children's explicit memory. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to non-edible objects, food presentations seem to be eye-catchers that immediately grab children's attention and they are also able to maintain this attention. Yet, for unhealthy food presentations, memory seems to be less dependent on visual attention. That is, compared to healthy products or non-edible objects, unhealthy food presentations do not require the same amount of visual attention in order to be remembered.

The Forbidden Reward. The Emergence of Parent-Child Conflicts About Food Over Time and the Influence of Parents' Communication Strategies and Feeding Practices.

One of the most critical arenas for conflicts between parents and their children relates to food. Although parent-child conflicts about food are a real occurrence, this form of parent-child interaction has been rarely examined. Given the special role of parents in shaping children's diet, we especially focus on the impact of parental measures. This study investigates how parental communication strategies (i.e., active vs. restrictive) and feeding practices (i.e., overt control vs. covert control) affect the emergence of parent-child conflicts about food over time. Based on previous research, we assessed overt control through parents' use of food as a reward and restriction of their children's access to specific food types. We explored the impact of our predictors on both conflicts about unhealthy and healthy food with a two-wave panel study including parents and their children (N = 541; children aged between 5 and 11) in Austria between fall 2018 and spring 2019. Results of two multiple linear regressions indicated that predominantly parents' use of unhealthy food as a reward is connected to both healthy and unhealthy food conflicts. Furthermore, inconsistent parental educational styles increased the respective conflict potential. Active food-related mediation and covert control did not relate to food-related conflicts about unhealthy and healthy food. Parents' increased use of overtly controlling and restrictive feeding practices might not be only counterproductive for children's diet but also for food-related parent-child interactions. Instead, a "health discourse" (i.e., active food-related mediation) might prevent food-related conflicts and foster a healthy growth in the future.

Do children's food choices go with the crowd? Effects of majority and minority peer cues shown within an audiovisual cartoon on children's healthy food choice.

RATIONALE: Studies show that the presentation of healthy foods within media does not lead to healthier food choices in children. A persuasive strategy is needed. We investigated how healthy peer cues shown in an audiovisual cartoon influence children's food choice. METHOD: In an experiment, we showed children a cartoon presenting no food (i.e., the control condition), one child eating raspberries (i.e., the minority condition), or all children eating raspberries (i.e., the majority condition). We measured children's majority awareness-that is, their awareness of peers' preference for raspberries-as a mediator variable. We assessed children's fruit choice as a dependent variable and tested the moderating role of food neophobia. RESULTS: Children in the majority condition did not show a higher majority awareness compared to the control condition. Compared to the control and majority conditions, however, the minority condition prompted children to conclude that most of their peers do not like raspberries, leading to a subsequent lower likelihood of choosing fruit. Children's levels of food neophobia did not moderate these results, but food neophobia moderated the direct effect of experimental conditions on food choice, independent of majority awareness. In particular, children with high levels of food neophobia refrained from choosing the healthy snack when the minority of peers ate raspberries in the cartoon. CONCLUSIONS: This study has provided some indications into how healthy food presentations within an audiovisual stimulus can influence children's food choice. Prompting children's healthy eating behaviors by presenting healthy foods in media content is not as easy as prompting unhealthy food choices by presenting unhealthy foods. Children's natural preference for fruit is attenuated by peer cues shown in media when a peer is in a minority. Overall, content producers should be aware of the risks of minority peer cues.

Shaping children's healthy eating habits with food placements? Food placements of high and low nutritional value in cartoons, Children's BMI, food-related parental mediation strategies, and food choice.

Research on media induced food choices of children has not sufficiently investigated whether food placements of snacks high in nutritional value can strengthen children's healthy eating behavior. Furthermore, we lack knowledge about the moderating role of children's individual characteristics such as parental food-related mediation or BMI. The current study combines data from an experiment involving children with a survey of their parents. We exposed children to a cartoon either containing no food placements, placements of mandarins (i.e., snack high in nutritional value), or placements of fruit gums (i.e., snack low in nutritional value). Afterwards, food consumption was measured by giving children the option to choose between fruit gums or mandarins. Children in both snack placement conditions showed stronger preference for the snack low in nutritional value (i.e., fruit gum) compared to the control group. Interestingly, neither restrictive nor active food-related mediation prevented the effects of the placements on children's choice of snacks low in nutritional value. Compared to children with a low BMI, children with high BMI levels had a stronger disposition to choose the fruit gums if a snack high in nutritional value (i.e., mandarin) was presented. Thus, making snacks high in nutritional attractive for children through media presentation might need stronger persuasive cues.