Abstract

This study explored the impact of Social Media Influencers on dietary choices of young adults. Now days almost every youngster has an ideal in the form of social media influencers and mainstream celebrities. The opinion of social media influencers play an important role in modifying lifestyle of young college and university students. They have the power to alter the dietary choices of young adults either in a positive or negative manner. Because of this mostly students are unable to maintain healthy lifestyle as they are wasting hours on scrolling social media and have limit their physical activity. Young adulthood is a phase of life where youngsters develop different habits which directly affect their lifestyle. The social media influencers chosen for this research are specifically from social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. In today's era everyone has easy excess to internet and people prefer to seek the solution of their problems from internet. The purpose of this research is to understand how influencers change the dietary patterns, physical activity and overall lifestyle of young adults. Sample size of 500 students was chosen and a random questionnaire survey was conducted on the students of Ibadat International University. The nutritional status of the respondents was assessed using the questionnaire comprises of demographic information, anthropometrics, and dietary data. The survey was held between the age group of 18 to 27 years old students from different departments of the University. Data was analyzed using the SPSS version 25.0. Frequencies and percentages were calculated with significant level 0.3. Most of the students were not blindly following the social media influencers and so called social media norms with regard to their dietary choices and lifestyle. 77% of the students agreed that the social media influencer's use of marketing tactics for brand endorsement and product selling and 68.60% of the students claimed that yes there was a change in perception of a brand change with social media influencers marketing 67.60% students were worried about their poor eating habits. With the help of all the methods used it is concluded that the work of social media influencers slightly impacted the dietary choices and lifestyle norms of young adults.