Overexposure and hyper sexualization to increase sells: social perceptions and attitudes about tweens in commercial communications

Abstract

[EN] Introduction. Pre-adolescents access influencers who use the public display of their body image as a form of sale. Tweens can imitate these patterns in their identity and socialization processes. The aim of this paper is to analyze the perceptions of Spanish society about pre-adolescents (adolescent girls under 13 years of age) and their attitudes regarding their representation in advertising and commercial communications to verify if this representation harms them and makes them more vulnerable in society. Methodology. A telephone survey has been carried out in 346 households throughout Spain with representatives between 18 and 65 years of age. Results. In 8 out of 10 households, it is perceived that pre-adolescents easily overexpose their image (78.7 %), give greater value to their physical appearance than to other aspects (78.8 %), and assume adult patterns of behavior (77.7 %). Regarding their representation in commercial communications, advertising is said to show an image of them much older than they are (86.4 %), idealized (84.8 %) and hypersexualized with the aim of selling more (83.1 %), and that the styles are not in accordance with the age of the preadolescents (73.7 %). Conclusions. There is a social perception of violation of the image of preadolescents, which can be explained and predicted according to the sex and age of the individuals and their attitudes towards adult, hypersexualized and idealized representation and towards the generalized acceptance of these images of minors in commercial communications. To foster greater social inclusion, the responsible contribution of influencers and the critical attitude of minors and parents towards the images that become a trend are required.