Your favorite YouTuber just challenged 10 strangers to race blindfolded through a giant maze of slime. The first to finish will get $10,000 and an exclusive edition of a pricey new phone.
You can’t help but watch as the competitors push through the goo. You know you’re in for 20 minutes of hilarious entertainment—that slime looks gross! But the YouTuber didn’t create this video just to make you laugh. He is trying to get you to buy that phone, and advertisers are paying him to do it.
Surprised? Many influencers today earn money by marketing companies’ products through their videos and posts. Influencers are people who have a large following on a social media platform. Their content helps companies influence the spending habits of millions of people—including kids and teens.
Such partnerships benefit advertisers and influencers, but they may not always be in the viewers’ best interest, experts say.
“These things are very deliberate, and people are making a lot of money off of them,” says Christine Elgersma of Common Sense Media, a