This book offers a pioneering exploration of how digital influencers are shaping body perceptions and affecting the physical and emotional well-being of children and adolescents in the digital age. Bringing together media and communication studies, psychology, advertising, and youth studies, the volume analyzes influencer ecologies that span fitfluencers, kidfluencers, microinfluencers, and AI‑generated virtual personas, and traces their effects on body image, mental health, consumer socialization, and digital well‑being.

Bringing together chapters written by researchers from different countries – Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United States – this contributed volume analyzes how content produced by digital influencers about mental health, physical exercises, food consumption, physical appearance and body image impact children’s and adolescents health and well-being in the real world. The volume concludes with evidence‑informed guidance for educators, families, platforms, and policymakers, emphasizing disclosure standards, protections for minors, and AI and media literacy to support more livable digital environments.

Digital Influencers and Children and Youth Well-Being will be of interest to researchers from various disciplines, such as health, developmental and social psychology; public health; education; and media and communication studies. It will also be a valuable tool for psychologists, educators, social workers and public health professionals directly working with children and adolescents or involved with the formulation and implementation of public policies for these age groups.  

Beatriz Feijoo is Associate Professor of Advertising at Villanueva University (Spain). Her research focuses on the relationship between communication and minors, the use and consumption of screens among new generations, and more recently, the impact of new persuasive formats on children and adolescents. In this field, she is the author of numerous publications and scientific articles, editor of books with well-known publishers (Springer, Tirant Humanidades), and Principal Investigator of research projects funded by the Government of Chile, the State Research Agency of the Government of Spain, Mapfre Foundation and BBVA Foundation.

Mònika Jiménez Morales is Senior Lecturer in the Communication Department at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain. She holds a Ph.D. in Audiovisual Communication and a BA in Communication Studies and Humanities. Her research focuses on the psychosocial incidence of media discourse, especially in social media. She has been active in international conferences since 2004 and was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, working on advertising and childhood obesity projects. As a member of UPF’s Communication Advertising and Society Research Group (CAS UPF), she has authored numerous publications and coordinated various studies. She currently co-leads the SMARS Project, which explores influencers and adolescents as creators and consumers of mental health content on social media. The project delves into the discourse, prevalence, and digital literacy related to psychological disorders and the stigma associated with them.

Charo Sádaba is Full Professor and Dean of the School of Communication at the University of Navarra. Over the past twenty years, she has researched the relationship between children, adolescents, and technology. She has been involved in numerous research projects in this field across Latin America, Spain, and Europe. More recently, she has focused on digital competence and media literacy in the context of combating disinformation, as part of the Iberifier team, the Iberian hub of EDMO. In 2022, she was part of the European Commission's expert group working on "Tackling disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training." She is also a co-PI of the Youth in Transition project at the ICS of the University of Navarra.