I hate these companies so much. Last year, we fostered an 11-year-old girl who was essentially raised by YouTube. She was obsessed with fast fashion, wanted to have the hair of the Asian influencers she watched (she’s black with t 13 [I think] textured hair), and wanted all sorts of shit from Temu, Shein and AliExpress. It was so bad, she got annoyed at my ad blockers, as she had a fear of missing out of the “latest sales.”
These companies, and the advertising itself, have made her obsessed with instant endorphin fixes, and the moment she gets a credit card, she will completely ruin her financial future with it.
We gave her an allowance at our own discretion, though I forbade Shein and Temu due to their tracking software.
Most of her addiction to shopping started before she was put in the foster system. Since no one wanted to raise her, she was often just handed a tablet and told to keep quiet.
To get to the core of your question, in just about every day to day occurrence, we were her parents and had the final say. The way to look at it is: we were essentially in a three parent partnership with the foster care program being the third parent that could veto us at any time, though they would only do so in the case of safety.