KS2 PSHE: 3. Influencers: how they can affect our spending

Primary Resources > Primary PSHE > Financial education

Video summary

This animated video demonstrates how spending money can be influenced by other people including friends and online influencers.

Two friends, Mira and Izzy, are big fans of an online influencer and the products she endorses.

Izzy suggests Mira should become an influencer too. Mira realises companies will give you products for free if you promote them online, but this leads to Izzy buying something she recommends which Mira knows is faulty.

This video is from the series Financial education.

Teacher Notes

Central or big idea

The decisions we make about spending money can be influenced by other people including our friends and online influencers.

Questions to explore

• What influences your decisions about spending?
• Why do online influencers promote products?
• Do influencers have to tell you if they are being paid to promote a product?

Key learning outcomes (Young Enterprise Financial Education Planning Framework)

7-9 - Lower KS2

• I know that the decisions I make about saving and spending my money can be influenced by, and have an impact on, other people.
• I can take account of other people’s ideas and opinions when making decisions about saving and spending.
• I am beginning to understand that different people have different attitudes to, and feelings about, saving and spending money.

Key vocabulary and definitions

• Influence: to have an effect on a behaviour (or choice)
• Influencer: a person who influences others, who can influence others to buy products by promoting them on social media
• Product: something that is for sale
• Promote: to tell people what is good about a product
• Advertise: to promote a product in order to sell it

Suggested activities

What might happen next?

Watch the animation.

• How do you think Izzy felt at the end?
• How do you think Mira felt?
• Ask the children to think about what Mira might do next (e.g. quit being an influencer, re-align with companies she shares values with, use her influence for good, ensure she only promotes high quality products she really values).
• Create a storyboard for the next part of the animation, using thought and speech bubbles.

How friends influence our spending:

• Role play a conversation between Mira and Izzy after Mira claims she did not tell Izzy to buy the headphones. You might use a conscience alley to generate ideas for the conversation.
• Explore how financial decisions might be influenced by friends and how trust can be broken between friends when they influence each other’s spending decisions.

An influencer’s responsibility:

• Was Mira responsible for the quality of the headphones Izzy bought?
• What responsibility does Mira have in this situation?
• What responsibilities does Izzy have?
• Imagine that the next day Mira discovers that other children in the school have bought the headphones after watching her video online.
  • If you were Mira, how would you feel?
  • What would you do?

Ideas for going further

• Research the guidance and law around promoting and advertising producers online on social media.
  • What are influencers required to do?
  • What do they not have to do?

Links to other BBC resources

• BBC Bitesize: KS2 Money

More from this series: