Characterising the Beyond 50 Cohort: Preliminary Exploration of Physical and Psychosocial Health Factors and Substance Use Among a Cohort of Community Dwelling Adults Aged 50-70 Years.

U.S. adolescents are a prime target for unhealthy food companies because of their significant spending power, influence over household purchases, and potential to shape lifelong consumer habits (). Total adolescent spending in the U.S. is estimated at $67 billion, with about one-quarter devoted to food (Piper Sandler, 2025). Adolescence is also a developmental period critical for forming long-term dietary patterns and brand preferences (), making adolescents a lucrative audience for marketers aiming to secure lifelong customers. This targeting takes place within a massive and growing economic sector; the unhealthy food industry is valued at $166 billion in the U.S. alone (VFM, 2024), with annual retail sales on the rise (). Ultra-processed foods, a variant of unhealthy foods, now account for more than half of all dietary energy consumed in the U.S. (Baraldi et al., 2018), and unhealthy food alone comprises 13% of household expenditures—rivaling spending on education, clothing, and healthcare combined (). These patterns are not accidental but the result of strategic marketing efforts that have normalized unhealthy food consumption as part of American culture (). To capitalize on the adolescent consumer demographic, unhealthy food companies have increasingly directed their efforts toward social media marketing (Mc Carthy et al., 2022), which dominate the daily lives of U.S. adolescents (Pew Research Center, 2022). Social media affords marketers unique opportunities for personalized engagement, rapid message dissemination, and interactive content formats that traditional advertising channels cannot replicate (). Consequently, social media marketing has become a critical battleground for shaping adolescent food choices in the United States. Central to social media marketing are product promoters—individuals who occupy hybrid roles as both content creators and brand ambassadors (). For adolescents, promoters often blur the line between personal relationships and commercial persuasion tools, fostering parasocial connections that can undermine advertising literacy, awareness of marketing goals, and resistance to marketing tactics (; ; ). When they are famous only inside their social media presence, these promoters are perceived as more authentic, sincere, and credible than traditional celebrities (; ). They can render commercial endorsements challenging to distinguish from personal recommendations, thereby increasing their effectiveness in promoting unhealthy food products to adolescents. Indeed, children who viewed a mock Instagram feed including promoters endorsing unhealthy snacks consumed more calories from unhealthy foods compared to children who viewed feeds with promoters endorsing non-food products ().