An advocacy group is calling for the
government to develop new policies that would restrict how companies market junk food to minors.
“The United States has continued to rely on an
outdated self-regulatory model that does not take into account the full spectrum of Big Data and AdTech practices in today’s contemporary digital marketplace, places too much responsibility on
parents, and offers only minimal protections for the youngest children,” the Center for Digital Democracy stated Wednesday.
“Tech platforms especially popular with young people --
including Facebook’s Instagram, Amazon’s Twitch, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Google’s YouTube -- are working with giant food and beverage companies, such as Coca Cola, KFC, Pepsi
and McDonald’s, to promote sugar-sweetened soda, energy drinks, candy, fast food, and other unhealthy products across social media, gaming, and streaming video,” the organization
added.
The group also published a 72-report exploring how food and beverage companies advertise to minors -- including campaigns that rely on influencer marketing as well as branded
content.
The authors say food and beverage marketers have collaborated with tech companies to “enhance and expand the promotion of unhealthy food brands and products” to children
and teens.
“These efforts have created a powerful, pervasive, and immersive digital obesogenic environment that is harming children’s health, furthering health inequities, and
contributing to increasingly higher levels of disease in the population,” the report states.
The Center for Digital Democracy put forward several recommendations -- including
restrictions on native advertising, influencer marketing and other ad techniques that are “designed to circumvent ad-blocking technologies and to appeal to young people who do not like
advertising.”
The organization, which has long advocated for stricter privacy laws, also says new policies regarding food marketing should include curbs on data collection and ad
targeting.
“Both the technology industry and the food and beverage industry are involved in unprecedented data collection as a core element of their marketing efforts,” the group
writes in the report's executive summary. “Any policies to address digital food marketing should include restrictions on the use of data, including significant limits on profiling and targeting
young people under 18.”