Childhood and Adolescent Obesity and its Context

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Social Media Campaign: Children’s Food Campaign
Childhood and Adolescent Obesity and Its Context
Childhood and adolescent obesity is a serious health concern in the United States that puts youngsters at risk for poor health. According to a CDC report, the prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents between 2 and 19 years in 2017-2018 was 19.3%. When broken down, obesity prevalence was 13.4% among children between 2 and 5 years old, 20.3% among youngsters between 6 to 11 years old, and 21.2% among adolescents between 12 and 19 years old. The figure below shows trends in obesity among children and adolescents between 2 and 19 years in America.
Figure 1: Sourced From CDC
Childhood obesity was more widespread among minority children and adolescents: obesity prevalence was 25.6% among Hispanic children, 24.2% among blacks, 16.1% among white children, and 8.7% among Asian children (CDC). Obesity among children and adolescents is a complex health issue. It has been associated with several factors such as genetics, eating behavior, medications, and certain societal and community elements, including child care and school environments, access to healthy and affordable foods, along with the availability of safe and appropriate places for physical activity (CDC). On the whole, the current prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity is driven by numerous societal, commercial, financial, technological, and industrial factors.
Figure 2
However, the two primary causes of childhood and adolescent obesity are nutritional and physical activity factors. The greater availability of fast foods and sugar-saturated beverages have played a significant part in the high obesity rates among children and youth. Moreover, the excessive sedentary behaviors of most youngsters today, due to the widespread availability of video games, television, and computers, have resulted in less than optimal physical activity outside of school hours. The obesity epidemic has profound health implications that include type 2 diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, obstructive sleep apnea, hypertension, poor self-esteem, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and a lower health-associated quality of life. Worse, up to 80% of obese youngsters continue to be overweight into adulthood, increasing national rates of dyslipidemia, hypertension, insulin resistance, and coronary artery disease, which is one of the leading causes of death in America (Bhadoria et al.).
Figure 3
Even though the successful treatment of childhood and adolescent obesity is somewhat unclear, several studies have demonstrated that youngsters appear to respond better to healthy eating and exercise interventions than adults. Several reasons have been suggested for this phenomenon, including the influence of family on behavioral change, greater motivation, and the capacity of youngsters to capitalize on longitudinal growth, which enables youths to "grow into their weight" (Sanyaolu et al.). Public health officials have hailed social marketing as one of the pillars to preventing and reducing childhood obesity at the community and individual levels. In order to get everyone working together to reduce obesity among children and youths, a holistic social media health and wellness campaign targeting both children and parents is critical. Given the rise of digital devices that allow users to move ambiently between several social network sites at all times of the day, social media has now infiltrated almost every other daily media practice. Social network sites are now a central part of identity, social, and political management (Jenkins et al.).
Figure 4
Social network sites are at the interface between people and social media and have become synonymous with the "internet." Because of the broad appeal and reach of social network sites are suitable for health campaigns that aim to access at-risk and minority populations. This essay will outline a social media health and wellness campaign that targets both children and their parents and is geared towards raising community awareness of childhood and adolescent obesity and increasing healthy lifestyles at the family level. The campaign will increase family knowledge on the current children and adolescent epidemic, the importance of healthy eating and physical activity in combating the health concern, and desirable behaviors that can be translated into real situations. These desirable behaviors include reducing calorie and sugar intake, reducing unwholesome snacking, lowering fat consumption, increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables, 1 hour of moderately intense activity, and reducing sedentary behavior.
Figure 5
The campaign will be conducted through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn social media platforms. Facebook is the most popular social media network and will be integral in targeting both parents and children, especially adolescents, in a cost-effective manner. The campaign will also use Instagram since imagery always travels further online than written advertisements: the campaign will capitalize on the visual stimuli of the platform to increase the spreadability of health and wellness pictures, reels, and videos. LinkedIn caters to a high-value audience and is popular with working parents with higher incomes. Launching the campaign on LinkedIn will allow accurate audience targeting with family information on the current children and adolescent epidemic, the importance of healthy eating and physical activity in combating the health concern, and desirable behaviors that can be translated into real situations.
Nature of Communication and User Behavior on Social Networking Sites
Although there are numerous concepts on communication in social media networks, the health and wellness campaign will refer to the spreadability, competition, and behavior change process as these are the most relevant to the cause. The concept of spreadability relates to audiences' technical and cultural potential to share content for their uses, whether with the consent of rights holders or against their permission (Jenkins et al.). Spreadable media entails the cultural practices together with social logic that facilitate and promote content. It acknowledges the importance of social links between people, augmented by social media platforms, and focuses on how content is consumed by audiences and shared during audience interactions (Stein). The spreadable media mentality aims at creating content that different audiences can circulate for various purposes by allowing them to alter the context of the material as they circulate it within their social circles.
The social media health and wellness campaign will aim to improve the spreadability of its healthy lifestyle habits messages by motivating parents and children to generate interest in the content among community members. Through collaboration across roles, the campaign will use families as grassroots intermediaries by encouraging them to share content with other community members. Since the purpose of the campaign is to inform as many families as possible about the current prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity, over and above, actionable lifestyle modifications for obesity, the circulation reach of spreadable health and wellness content will be of paramount importance. The social media health and wellness campaign will design content that is spreadable by creating engaging messages that speak to positive associations between grassroots intermediaries and other community members. All health messages will be designed to appeal to friendship-based and interest-based networks to improve circulation among parents and at-risk children.
Figure 6
The concept of competition speaks to the ability of social media content to reach and engage a large audience in a competitive communication setting where there is a continuous influx of similar messaging or marketing (Gorham). An increasing number of health organizations are turning to social media to extend the reach of their wellness content. Therefore, the obesity awareness and prevention campaign will apply competitive strategies to increase both the visibility and spread of its healthy lifestyles habits messages (Kim). In order to improve the competitiveness of its content, the social media campaign will use the approaches of social responsibility, influencer marketing, and newsjacking to enhance engagement and circulation reach. The public is receptive to social media content that aligns with the general belief that organizations must advance social good and well-being. In light of this, the health and wellness campaign will highlight the endemic health challenge of childhood and adolescent obesity. By doing this, the social media campaign will demonstrate its active role in combating the nationwide epidemic and guiding families into a healthier future. Campaigns that lead change in society have the chance to build meaningful and sustainable connections with their target audience.
Another strategy the campaign will use to beat competing movements is newsjacking. The campaign managers will first assess the current health issue of childhood and adolescent obesity to determine how to engage families and children best. There have been calls to action by various health stakeholders in recent times regarding the prevalence of childhood obesity. In order to reduce the risk of significant backlash, the campaign managers will first understand the perceptions and experiences of families and youngsters with obesity before applying the new...