Generation Like

Modern day marketing companies have discovered that they can use today’s teens for free promotion without the kids asking for anything in return. Nowadays kids are addicted to social media, in fact many find self-confidence in how many likes or friends they have on a social media. When kids like or retweet something they are unknowingly promoting companies to all their friends or followers. Companies use this to their advantage even going to the extent of giving out virtual rewards to top promoters. If kids knew that they were essentially being exploited by these big companies, they would likely ask for something in return, something more than just a virtual reward.

Social media has become widespread in the last ten years, Twitter has close to 700,000 users (Statistic Brain), Facebook has nearly 1.1 billion (Yahoo), and YouTube has over one billion users a month (YouTube). According to a 2012 survey documented by the PewResearch Internet Project, “95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online.” In order for teens to feel like they are apart of their community they must participate in social media. “Likes, follows, friends, retweets- they’re the social currency of this generation, Generation Like. The more likes you have the better you feel.” (Generation Like) To marketing companies, the more followers or likes a user has, the more exposure a company can get if the user promotes them. Companies target all teens, some who are looking for attention, like Tyler Oakley, some who are looking for fame and success, like Steven Fernandez, and some who are simply young fanatics, like Ceili Lynch.

Tyler Oakley, a video blogger, has over four million subscribers on YouTube; his videos consist of him talking about his likes and dislikes. (YouT...

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...l. Little does she know though, is that she and millions of kids like her had been apart of the marketing plan all along. The Hunger Games had to do virtually no marketing for Catching Fire, they allowed kids to do it all for them, at no cost. They built an entire campaign on the recent social media boom, using kids free of charge.

In recent years, companies have discovered that they can reach kids most effectively using social media. Kids will like, share, and retweet things, therefore sharing it with all of their friends who then go on to share it with their friends and so on. Due to social media news can now really spread like wildfire. It seems that companies have turned to children to do most of the dirty work for them when it comes to advertising. Some kids have figured it out and are using it to their advantage, while others naively continue to work for free.