Child labour and online protection in a world of influencers
Valerie Verdoodt, S. van der Hof, Mark Leiser
Abstract
Nowadays, children grow up in a commercialized environment, where they are confronted with advertising and marketing on a daily basis. From a very young age, they already display a level of brand consciousness. Aside from being an attractive target group for advertisers – as they can purchase products or services themselves and have an important influence on their parents’ purchasing behaviour, brands are now increasingly relying on child influencers to promote goods and services for them. The child-influencer phenomenon raises important questions from a children’s rights perspective and necessitates a detailed study of the benefits and potential harms to the child. This chapter takes a novel approach by not only critiquing the advertising and marketing rules for gaps, shortcomings and failures in light of children’s rights, but also in analysing the role of the child in the constellation of influencer regulation through the lens of labour law and protection of vulnerable consumers.