The scientists of New York University School of Global Public Health have been warning parents to keep aloof their children from the YouTube videos which are inciting the children to eat junk food.
The trend of advertisements for junk and other health hazardous food on YouTube and social media is the increasing trend these days. Companies, producing sweet drinks and junk food spend $1.8 billion annually and now these companies are using YouTube influencers for this purpose.
In YouTube and social media platforms, such videos are also available in which games with soft drinks and candies have been designed. This is also a way to attract the children towards eating hazardous food and as such children are getting away from healthy foods.
In the days of Covid-19 when the schools are closed and children have been confined to their homes and spend maximum time watching YouTube and social media, they are badly exploited by the producers of junk food and unhealthy soft drinks.
Read more: Children face bigger online risks due to Covid-19 pandemic
The children are attracted by showing the videos of influencers of junk food. For instance, an eight-year-old influencer earned 2 crores and 60 lac dollars in this way.
The parents are unaware that junk food companies pay huge amounts to such child influencers. The experts of New York University watched 418 videos in which the child influencers are shown, attracting the children towards junk food and unhealthy soft drinks.
Junk food is extremely hazardous in many ways, the five of which are: with the regular use of junk food, one faces memory and learning problem, the risk of increasing dementia (the disease that causes the loss of mental power), the loss of the ability to control the appetite, one faces the chemical change in the body which creates depression and one comes across the problem of impatience which causes the uncontrollable cravings.
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