New survey findings reveal that kids are being ‘bombarded’ as never before with junk food ads – on social media. And the sheer volume of content is normalizing unhealthy eating. Which suggests government intervention is needed to protect our children…
A new analysis of social media posts that mention food and beverage products reveals that fast food restaurants and sugar sweetened beverages are the most common. With millions of posts reaching billions of users over the course of a year…
What they did
Monique Potvin Kent of the University of Ottawa, and colleagues, investigated the frequency and reach of user generated social media posts in Canada in 2020.
The study report explains, they simply identified the 40 food brands with the highest brand shares in Canada. Then they simply searched for mentions of them on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr and YouTube by general users of the sites.
What they found
The numbers almost defy comprehension…
“The 40 brands were mentioned [a total of] 16.85 million times in Canada, reaching 42.24 billion users in 2020. On Twitter alone, the cumulative followers of all users who mentioned the brands was 383.84 billion users and these Tweets had an estimated 491.21 billion impressions.”
The team also noted that, “The results from our study are consistent with other research. A study conducted in Sweden looking at Instagram posts of 14-year-olds found that 85% of their posts contained food and beverages, and 67.7% of these food and beverage posts were considered to be HFSS foods.” HFSS stands for ‘food and drinks that are High in Fat, Salt or Sugar’.
The takeaway
In short, the social media are normalizing the image and perception of junk food. And that’s desensitizing kids (and their parents) to the dangers of consuming so-called HSSFs.
The study conclusions warn, “policies designed to protect children’s health must absolutely consider the digital food environment which is likely contributing to the normalization of unhealthy food and beverage intake.”
Such policies, the team says, should include ‘educational campaigns’ for both parents and kids stressing the powerful influence social media marketing can have on children and teens.
‘Upstream policies’ should include, “mandatory government regulations that push social media companies to identify and limit exposure to unhealthy food marketing viewed by children.”
My take
The biggest problem, in this humble observer’s view, is that the internet is currently ‘unlimited’. There are no ‘guardrails’, as current mainstream journalism jargon would have it.
Conventional media operate under certain restraints – either material or logistical – such as cost or availability of ‘time’ or space’. But on the internet ‘pages’ can be any length the content dictates, including as many ads as a site chooses to allow. And ads themselves can be any size. Or, in the case of multi-media presentations, any duration the advertising geniuses behind them deem appropriate.
Also much of the online exposure kids get is ‘earned media’. That’s what marketing types call any media coverage a product gets that it didn’t have to may for. Which is to say, news coverage or social chatter including re-tweeting.
I fear that – human nature being what it is – no amount of ‘education’ or ‘awareness’ campaigning is going to dissuade kids from viewing and absorbing potentially harmful junk food advertising and peer opinion. It’s simply what psychologists have long referred to as the ‘impressionability of youth’…
~ Maggie J.