I am an associate professor in information and communication technology policy at Concordia University. I'm presenting along with Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, who cannot be here today, and sharing research developed at the Pol Comm Tech Lab's project on political and civic influencers.
We are presenting today as experts in digital media systems and automated media, with a growing attention into influencers, real and virtual. While our research largely attends to the broader media dynamics, we emphasize some trends necessary for understanding how these changes may impact children, and especially youth.
Research shows that children have lived through profound changes in our media systems. Twitch and TikTok, as well as games like Roblox and Fortnite, normalize and teach children to use cryptocurrencies, such that 80% of respondents in a youth survey claim to have invested in an in-game currency. AI usage as well is dominated by gen Z users, with many of our students being exposed to AI content daily.
We are just beginning to appreciate the scale of these changes. Fifty-five per cent of teens use TikTok, whereas just 22% of adults use it. The gap in media habits seems to be growing, so we need to be mindful not to panic over the change. Youth have sophisticated media habits; they are neither helpless nor without support. Parents and schools play important roles in teaching media literacy. Most parents have talked to their children about online safety.
One major challenge has been the rise of online influencers in our media system. An influencer is “a highly visible subset of digital content creators defined by their substantial following, distinctive brand persona, and patterned relationships with commercial sponsors”, according to Brooke Erin Duffy in 2020. Influencers vary in quality and reliability, but speaking as a professor and from what we've encountered in our research, I know that our students know people who have careers as influencers, and many of our students can better identify with influencers than with journalists as a career choice. Seventy-eight per cent of youth follow an influencer. Dr. Elizabeth Dubois studies the role of political influencers, a key consideration in how youth form political opinions today.
Good as their strategies may be, youth have to navigate a complex media environment that at times is adversarial. Influencers may be used intentionally to perpetuate known harms, such as cyber-bullying, negative mental and physical health impacts and disinformation, but they are not the only challenge to today's media system.
Media systems are increasingly flooded with fake, scammy and AI-generated content. The next turn in this ongoing experiment on youth will involve AI. Internet users of all kinds are also impacted by scams from unaccountable online advertising and ineffective online safety measures in many of our platforms. Reuters reports that $16 billion—10% of Meta's advertising revenue—comes from scam advertising. Being online now requires constant attention to avoid being scammed.
Influencers, AI and media systems more broadly have complex positive and negative effects, but increasingly, the problem is not connectivity, exposure or being online; it's about good habits, good supports and good choices.
Policy can improve this environment through better accountability for advertising and advertising-supported industries like social media and very large online platforms; better protection against scams, and more accountability for advertising firms and platforms that do not effectively address scams, harmful apps and false advertising on their platforms; and better standards to help influencers demonstrate their trustworthiness and reliability.
These objectives can happen through support to ensure age-appropriate design in platforms and through efforts to ensure that platforms fulfill their social mission; enforcement and scaling of existing regulation through the CRTC and the Competition Bureau to compel these regulators to be more proactive against false advertising, to combat stereotyping and to work to create good jobs for this new class of media creators—influencers; and finally, continued support for public service media and greater support for frontline workers teaching media education.
Thank you very much. That concludes my comments.