Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns

Area of Science:

• Pediatric nutrition
• Media psychology
• Digital marketing impact on children

Background:

• Media characters promote unhealthy snacks, contributing to childhood obesity.
• Digital marketing, especially in apps, is a growing concern for children's dietary habits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if children's snack choices are influenced by media characters in a mobile app.
• To determine the role of character awareness in children's snack selection and consumption patterns.

Main Methods:

• Four- and 5-year-old children (N=132) played a bowling game on an iPad.
• The game featured no character, or a character associated with healthy or unhealthy snacks.
• Snack selection and consumption were measured post-app play; character awareness was assessed via verbalizations.

Main Results:

• No overall effect of the character presence was found compared to a control group.
• Character awareness significantly increased healthy snack selection/consumption when the character promoted healthy snacks.
• Character awareness also increased unhealthy snack selection/consumption when the character promoted unhealthy snacks, though children were unaware of this influence.

Conclusions:

• Awareness of a popular app character can lead young children to choose healthier snacks when promoted.
• This suggests potential for using character marketing to encourage healthier eating patterns in digital environments.
• Children's unawareness of the character's influence highlights the subtle impact of media marketing.