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The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages

There have been global calls to action to protect children (aged <18) from exposure to the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages (‘unhealthy foods’). In this context, the rising popularity of social media, particularly amongst adolescents, represents an important focus area. This study aimed...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sacks, Gary, Looi, Evelyn Suk Yi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312784/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32545343
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114172
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author Sacks, Gary
Looi, Evelyn Suk Yi
author_facet Sacks, Gary
Looi, Evelyn Suk Yi
author_sort Sacks, Gary
collection PubMed
description There have been global calls to action to protect children (aged <18) from exposure to the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages (‘unhealthy foods’). In this context, the rising popularity of social media, particularly amongst adolescents, represents an important focus area. This study aimed to examine the advertising policies of major global social media platforms related to the advertising of unhealthy foods, and to identify opportunities for social media platforms to take action. We conducted a desk-based review of the advertising policies of the 16 largest social media platforms globally. We examined their publicly available advertising policies related to food and obesity, as well as in relation to other areas impacting public health. The advertising policies for 12 of the selected social media platforms were located. None of these platforms adopted comprehensive restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy foods, with only two platforms having relevant (but very limited) policies in the area. In comparison, 11 of the 12 social media platforms had policies restricting the advertising of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and/or weight loss. There is, therefore, an opportunity for major social media platforms to voluntarily restrict the exposure of children to the marketing of unhealthy foods, which can contribute to efforts to improve populations’ diets.
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spelling pubmed-73127842020-06-26 The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages Sacks, Gary Looi, Evelyn Suk Yi Int J Environ Res Public Health Article There have been global calls to action to protect children (aged <18) from exposure to the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages (‘unhealthy foods’). In this context, the rising popularity of social media, particularly amongst adolescents, represents an important focus area. This study aimed to examine the advertising policies of major global social media platforms related to the advertising of unhealthy foods, and to identify opportunities for social media platforms to take action. We conducted a desk-based review of the advertising policies of the 16 largest social media platforms globally. We examined their publicly available advertising policies related to food and obesity, as well as in relation to other areas impacting public health. The advertising policies for 12 of the selected social media platforms were located. None of these platforms adopted comprehensive restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy foods, with only two platforms having relevant (but very limited) policies in the area. In comparison, 11 of the 12 social media platforms had policies restricting the advertising of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and/or weight loss. There is, therefore, an opportunity for major social media platforms to voluntarily restrict the exposure of children to the marketing of unhealthy foods, which can contribute to efforts to improve populations’ diets. MDPI 2020-06-11 2020-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7312784/ /pubmed/32545343 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114172 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Sacks, Gary
Looi, Evelyn Suk Yi
The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title_full The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title_fullStr The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title_full_unstemmed The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title_short The Advertising Policies of Major Social Media Platforms Overlook the Imperative to Restrict the Exposure of Children and Adolescents to the Promotion of Unhealthy Foods and Beverages
title_sort advertising policies of major social media platforms overlook the imperative to restrict the exposure of children and adolescents to the promotion of unhealthy foods and beverages
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312784/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32545343
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17114172
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