Suspicious minds: Adolescents' inferences of manipulative intent in retouched influencer ads

Adolescents are a key target demographic for advertising due to their susceptibility and high engagement with social media. With the increasing prevalence of digital photo manipulation toward idealized beauty standards in influencer advertising posts, there is growing interest in whether disclosures of such manipulation can warn adolescents from deceptive practices. This study investigates the effects of disclosing photo enhancement on social media influencer advertising posts on adolescents' evaluations of advertising. We conducted a between-subjects experiment with 148 adolescents (ages 15-18) with three conditions: unretouched images without disclosure, digitally altered images without disclosure, and digitally altered images with a disclosure label. The findings showed that disclosing digital manipulation did not improve adolescents' ability to recognize the digital enhancement of the pictures depicting idealized beauty in social media posts. However, when digital manipulation was recognized, adolescents perceived social media influencers as using deceptive tactics, which negatively impacted their attitudes toward the promoted brand.