The news: Gen Alpha children wield an outsized amount of purchasing power in their households due to their effect on parents’ spending habits but are more swayed by personal recommendations than by ads.

• Those born between 2010 and 2014 influence $255 billion of spending in the US and determine more than half of spending in entertainment and dining categories, per Teneo’s Gen Alpha Consumer Influence Study.
• Despite being digital natives, they trust information from close contacts rather than online content or ads. Only 25% of 15-year-olds in the US and UK trust ads from companies online and 23% trust people they see on social media.

The data: On a scale of 1 to 10, Gen Alpha kids in the US and UK ranked friends (6.2), parents (6.1), and social media influencers (5.4) as the top drivers of their consumption decisions. Social media ads (5.1), ads from companies around town (4.9), and ads from companies on websites (4.9) ranked worse.

What it means: Gen Alpha is selective and skeptical of social content and advertising, even though the generation is tech-savvy and grew up online. Their trust is still rooted offline, especially with parents and peers, making influence more personal than algorithmic.

This makes it significantly harder for advertisers to capture trust and attention through standard digital channels. Brands will need to shift from awareness-driven ad strategies to trust-building ecosystems that engage parents, families, and peer ecosystems.

Recommendations for marketers: Winning with Gen Alpha means prioritizing authenticity and experiential or community-based marketing while recognizing parents as potential amplifiers. Ads that feel transactional or overly polished risk being tuned out, whereas recommendations embedded in everyday life carry outsized influence.

Focus on parents and peer groups first and create marketing moments that kids want to talk about, not ads they’re expected to watch.