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“Kidfluencer” is a relatively new term and refers to where young people actively exert influence on lifestyle and consumer behaviour through the use of social media. This study focused on capturing the complexities of this phenomenon, and issues of concern for policymakers that subsequently occur.

The study used semi-structured interviews to capture the retrospective experiences of ten young people as “kidfluencers” on the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

The findings identified several issues associated with being a kidfluencer, such as affecting individuals’ work-life balance, their education, how safe they felt online and physically, how they maintained friendships, pressure to increase their profile and their mental health well-being. Overall, the study suggests that kidfluencing has specific negative effects on kidfluencers and their childhood experiences, which should be of concern to policy makers.

All participants were above the age of eighteen. Therefore, their contributions reflect upon their past, rather than speaking about their recent experiences, which can lead to retrospective bias. The sample size is small, reflecting the difficulties in accessing this sensitive area for study.

The study provides support for the decision taken in France to introduce legislation that protects kidfluencers, which may suggest a need for legislation in other countries.

The study is relevant in the context of the new law adopted by the French National Assembly in 2020 to provide a legal framework for the activities of child influencers on a range of online platforms. To date, France is the only country where such laws have been enacted. So far, there has been no specific evaluation of this law, and very little research on welfare issues experienced by kidfluencers themselves, making this study timely.

The purpose of this paper is to rationalise the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so doing addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is relevant from social exclusion’s declining relevance in contemporary UK social policy and academia, where its consideration as a concept to explain disadvantage is being usurped by other concepts, both old and new.

The paper analyses criticisms of limitations of social exclusion which have typically centred on the operationalisation of the concept, but the author will argue that there are distinctive operationalisation and conceptual strengths within social exclusion which make it value-added as a concept to explain disadvantage. Specifically, there will be an analysis of both New Labour’s and the present Coalition government’s conceptualisation of the term in policy in relation to work.

The analysis highlights the significant difference that a focus on processes rather than outcomes of social exclusion can make to our understanding of inequality and social injustice, and locates this difference within an argument that social exclusion’s true applied capabilities for social justice requires a shift to a conceptualisation built on the processes that cause it in the first place.

The paper acts as a rejoinder to prevailing theoretical and political thinking of the limited and diminishing value of social exclusion for tackling disadvantage. In particular, the paper shows how social exclusion can be conceptualised to provide a critical approach to tackling inequality and social injustice, and in doing so foregrounds the truly applied capabilities of social exclusion for transforming social justice.