Digital food marketing to children and adolescents : problematic practices and policy interventions

Food and beverage marketing has undergone a dramatic transformation in the digital age. Fast food, snack, and beverage companies are drawing from an expanding toolbox of sophisticated online and social media marketing techniques, and the next few years will see an explosive rise in new tactics targeted especially at young people. Today’s marketing efforts are increasingly multidimensional—simultaneously and purposefully integrated into a range of social media and online applications: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, gaming, and mobile communications. The goal of contemporary marketing is not simply to expose young people to ads, but rather to foster ongoing engagement—by encouraging them to interact with, befriend, and integrate brands into their personal identities and social worlds. These rapid developments call for comprehensive review and analysis in light of their potential consequences on the childhood obesity epidemic. This report is designed to help policymakers, scholars, health professionals, industry leaders, and consumer advocates develop and refine safeguards for protecting young people from inappropriate marketing in today’s contemporary marketplace. Of particular concern are adolescents, who have been largely overlooked in the public policy debates and in the self-regulatory initiatives developed by the food and advertising industries. Over the past four decades, obesity rates among U.S. teenagers have quadrupled. Today one out of three teens is either overweight or obese, with obesity rates significantly higher for African-American and Hispanic adolescents than for whites. Because of young people’s avid use of new media, food and beverage marketers are aggressively targeting teens, particularly ethnic youth. Recent scientific research suggests that adolescents may be vulnerable to many of the new interactive marketing and advertising practices. The report presents five broad categories of digital marketing techniques that are used routinely by fast food, snack food, and soft drink companies to target children and adolescents. Some of these practices are inherently unfair, others raise serious privacy concerns, and still others are deceptive. Several of the techniques are purposely designed to tap into unconscious processes, thus bypassing the rational decision making that is at the heart of our system of fair marketing.