Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we are norm conforming herd animals.
Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different ball game!
Not "some sort of willful ignorance". It just requires "ignorance". I think most of us know someone who thinks that reality TV is ... well, reality. "It says it in the name".
> Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake
Perhaps you have very bright kids. My kid will ask me to buy two of whatever that person is pushing. He's simply not equipped to handle marketing at any level, yet.
I know adults who voted for Trump because they believed the apprentice gave them an unvarnished view of his character and decision making prowess in the real world. My own grandmother would cite episodes of the show.