Children's Responses to Advertising in Social Games

This study explored children's (ages 9 through 12) level of persuasion knowledge and peer influence susceptibility concerning advertising in social games and investigated how these variables affect children's desire for the brands advertised in these games. Results showed that (1) children have a fairly good knowledge of the advertising in social games yet hold uncritical attitudes toward it and claim to be not very susceptible to peer influence; (2) the most important predictors of children's desire for the advertised brands are a low critical attitude and high peer influence susceptibility; and (3) recognition and understanding of advertising in social games is effective in reducing advertised brand desire only for children who are familiar with social games.