It baffles me that more countries haven't put legislation in place to severely limit what ads can be served to under 18 year olds (or at least under 16).
I worked in an ad agency a number of years ago, and Phillip Morris approached us with a deliberate plan to launch big budget ad campaigns on social media platforms specifically because they could get in front of younger demos more easily (traditional media having existing regulations in my country).
The original idea was to build a large database of prospects to sell direct to even after regulation eventually cracks down on them. Amazingly no regulation has come yet, and Meta has done little to no self-regulation.
You can blame parents, but even then one under appreciated problem with digital ads is the lack of shared experience. With TV advertising, you know what your kid is seeing, everyone can see a verify what ad ran at what time on what channel etc. If a parent and a kid are scrolling social media their experience is entirely different, and you can't go back and see what someone else has seen.
My kid recently got a second hand iPad tablet. On it, she uses YouTube Kids. I made an account for her. Now, they ask _me_ for consent, since she cannot legally give it. They throw ads at her about toys, but this is illegal in my country to target children with ads. Ads are supposed to target parents, not kids. Now, if it were one ad at start, I'd hate it, but they go further: in a 10-minute movie, the thing quits like 3 times to show my kid an ad. She barely has the attention span to watch the bloody vid! You know why they do it? Not because it is legal; because they get away with it. Law is irrelevant if it isn't uphold.
Probably because being tracked across all platforms is a bad idea in a democractic/liberal type of country, and not worth the "think of the children" argument. At some point parents have to take some responsibility.
According to this link Food and Beverage ads are already prohibited on YouTube kids. I don't know if this is a US specific policy but I presume its similar elsewhere.
If your child watches a lot of YouTube, or any at all really, you should really invest in YouTube premium. It's incredible how much people use YouTube but because there is a free option, few bother to fork over $14 a month to remove ads, especially when it vastly improves the experience for your children. In a case like this I think the obvious solution is self-regulation.
I could see supporting with this, but it does seem like an abuse of the 'for the children' argument for this.
Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
Also some chicken nuggets are bad, but some average a gram of protein per 10 calories, which is a pretty good ratio, and especially for frozen food. Can't help but think this is too broad.
This is not systems thinking though. It take a lot of will for parents to fight kids desire for junk food from social pressure alone. Should parents be perfect citizens that make 10000 correct micro decisions a month correctly every time? Or can society help a bit by blocking some of the predators?
It is like "just say no". Thay'll do it for drug addicition. Simple.
Through my own experiences I feel that if the parents allow them to have cereal as a starter, then the choice between Frosted Flakes and Cinnamon Toast Crunch will be up to the kid.
Personally I came from a family that never had cereal for breakfast, so that advertising never affected me -- it's not like I'd ever have it.
I think its so children are open to eating it after the parents have bought it. If the food doesn't look appealing the parent will have to work harder but its the parents making the food choices not the child. Most of the time children don't even go to the grocery store with their parents.
> Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
I don't believe you have children of your own; is this an armchair opinion or your own lived experience?
Anyway while on paper this is true, in practice kids will ask for this and may get it as a treat, or they may get it from somewhere else. And as a one-off, that's fine, but they do get influenced by ads to want more of it at any time. Same with fast food chains, somehow the ones that aren't available where I live got an almost mythical status with the teenager here. A Taco Bell did open here but honestly it was mediocre and overpriced.
this is perverse, you understand they make a point about how easy it would be to not buy the cereal and they're right, a child does just HAVE to eat what you give them.
That children are a part of the decision making process is the failure.
The advertising works on the child, and ultimately the child (and the advert...directly to some extent but largely through the child) induces the parent to obtain the product.
> Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
I don’t think this is true in practice; it feels sufficiently obvious that children’s tastes influence what they get fed that I’m not going to bother to find a citation
more so in the past, there was a lot more food advertising directed at kids, because the thought was that kids could annoy their parents enough to drag the whole family to an establishment. and some marketing tricks work a lot better on children because of their social settings and general impulsiveness (e.g. "All the cool kids have Lunchables")
I have tried to avoid adverts for 20 years, but the adverts of my childhood (not just ones aimed at kids - autoglass repair and replace, safe style do buy one get one free, dfs sale ends Sunday, ronseal quick drying wood stain does exactly what it says on the tin)
> nd some marketing tricks work a lot better on children because of their social settings and general impulsiveness
Kids don't have the defenses against manipulation, especially when it's refined by billions in research dollars and decades of work by scientists and psychologists dedicated to exploiting their young minds.
Research has shown that kids (even into their teens) can't tell the difference between ads and content. They don't even know an ad when they see one, and the line between ad and content is often intentionally blurred. I've even seen adults struggle to identify ads when they're right in their face.
>Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
Damn, someone better ring up the cereal companies and tell them to stop advertising, I bet they'll feel foolish realizing they've wasted all that money!
It is amazing when you visit a city that has banned billboards especially when coming from one that does not.
It's the same (opposite) feeling you get when watching an ad free streaming service and the switch to live TV or Prime. Which is just like switching to a browser with out uBO.
If society went 30 days with a universal uBO experience, I think all wars would end, cats & dogs sleeping together, shields would become plow. You know, basically peace on earth.
Every once in a while I end up with a browser without adblocker. It baffles me how anyone would want to use the WWW like that. I cannot fathom, they're missing out, but at the end: those people plus the ones paying for services (which is sometimes me) are financing the platforms.
Breakfast cereals contain a colossal amount of sugar, and are a great way to keep your diabetes on its toes. They haven't been healthy for years, moreover the toys they put in them have been shit as well.
They are not banned. They are on "the list" (as the article says) meaning they must be scored using the "NPM model". Only scores exceeding 4 are "banned", which will include sweetened oats.
There's a lot of misinformation going around about how the legislation works.
All porridge oats are "in scope" of the regulation, which means they need to be scored using the "Nutrient Profile Model" score before being advertised.
The result is that porridge oats are not banned, but golden syrup instant porridge oats will be.
Do you think this is worth posting as a top-level comment? There's already lots of speculation in this thread (confusion even), and I appreciate you bringing an authoritative reference to the discussion.
The significant background that the UK just delivered a House of Lords enquiry in to the food system[0] which recommended a "complete ban" on junk food advertising and that the government ban junk food vendors from regulatory feedback. You can bet the consumer packaged goods (CPG) AKA 'junk food industry' - the likes of Mondelez, etc. - are actively resisting these changes with all manner of false reports, shoddy advertising doublespeak and back-channel arrangements. Given this background, the ban is relatively light touch. Expect further developments.
Help me understand. The UK government basically said that parents are not responsible enough to make dietary decisions for their children so the government needs to step in and do it for them?
Does that not seem like an overreach? Its not like 4 year olds are driving to McDonald's by themselves and ordering burgers. The parents are the ones being targeted here.
It's more "we don't want corporations selling unhealthy junk to have direct access to influence super-impressional kids" - cause guess what, in that case? You can be a perfectly responsible parent dietary-decision-wise, but have your kids whine and complain constantly because the kids aren't informed about the problems of it and just want the tasty shit they saw all the ads for.
Would you allow salespeople into your home to pitch your kids on stuff all day if they were in-person instead of on a screen?
Why not complain about the overreach of irresponsible companies trying to convince kids who have no way of knowing better to start damaging their long-term health?
As a parent I don't let my children watch things I disagree with. They can probably count the number of food ads they've seen in 1 hand because I don't let them watch TV. They can watch shows and movies but they're either streamed or checked out of the library.
But that's the way I choose to parent my child. If another parent wants their children to watch TV and be exposed to those ads then they should have every right. I'm not going to make a moral decision for them and I don't think the government should either.
Children are totally targeted. They will ask their parents and put pressure to buy them stuff. Maybe even the parents who don't cave in can be relieved of this.
In the longer term, stuff that enters your brain as a child shapes you and lasts long. See how well how many people in their 30s remember ads of their childhood.
Why would someone defend such ads anyway? I don't believe they achieve anything good for anyone except the advertiser.
Its because I don't want the government, people who I've never met in person and honestly are not the most moral of individuals, making moral decisions for my children on my behalf.
Even if the majority of citizens agreed that forcing their morality on the minority is the right thing to do I still disagree because individual freedom is more important than majority opinion.
They're not prohibiting anyone from feeding these things to their children. A lot of people will continue to do so.
The government would have to spend a lot of money on counter-campaigns to keep the public well informed and it probably wouldn't have the desired effect on children.
Finally, and this is a very important point for me, children cannot enter into business deals/contracts; commercials are business proposals; hence there should be no ads targeting children.
>The UK government basically said that parents are not responsible enough to make dietary decisions for their children so the government needs to step in and do it for them?
Stand outside any school gate in the UK and you will see that the majority of parents "aren't responsible enough to make dietary decisions for their children".
I'm fairly relaxed about it simply because this is a response to the behaviour of these corporations.
That's a great way to frame the whole thing if you're a corporation trying to sell junk food I guess.
In reality, this law is only about advertising, specifically about making it slightly harder to target children with advertising for junk food in a country that already has a serious problem with obesity.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. They banned certain advertisments at a particular time of day. They didn't ban parents from giving their children whatever thet want to give them.
Do you have children? They're targeted with ads everywhere. You can be a responsible parent but these things cause unnecessary stress. Quite frankly if the government wants to ban all advertising I would be thrilled.
I do have children and I don't let them be exposed to things I disagree with. But thats my moral decision. Why should my morality be forced on others? Making the decision to not expose your children to certain ads is a moral decision. Let the parents choose if its important for them. They can choose exactly what kind of content their children watch with streaming and DVDs. Long gone are the days where kids just sat in front a television and had to watch live cable TV where the parents didn't know what was coming up next.
I hope other countries take action soon. It's deeply irresponsible how we allow advertisements and Big Sugar/Fast Food companies to exploit colorful cartoon characters and misleading health claims to hook people—especially children—on excessive sugar and fat consumption. This not only fosters unhealthy eating habits but also conditions them to crave specific branded flavors from an early age.
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I worked in an ad agency a number of years ago, and Phillip Morris approached us with a deliberate plan to launch big budget ad campaigns on social media platforms specifically because they could get in front of younger demos more easily (traditional media having existing regulations in my country).
The original idea was to build a large database of prospects to sell direct to even after regulation eventually cracks down on them. Amazingly no regulation has come yet, and Meta has done little to no self-regulation.
You can blame parents, but even then one under appreciated problem with digital ads is the lack of shared experience. With TV advertising, you know what your kid is seeing, everyone can see a verify what ad ran at what time on what channel etc. If a parent and a kid are scrolling social media their experience is entirely different, and you can't go back and see what someone else has seen.
it's a quote from the article, it's very likely they'd ban ads targeted at children.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6168681?hl=en#zipp...
Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
Also some chicken nuggets are bad, but some average a gram of protein per 10 calories, which is a pretty good ratio, and especially for frozen food. Can't help but think this is too broad.
It is like "just say no". Thay'll do it for drug addicition. Simple.
If true why do cereal companies spend billions on advertising directly to children? For the fun of it?
Personally I came from a family that never had cereal for breakfast, so that advertising never affected me -- it's not like I'd ever have it.
I don't believe you have children of your own; is this an armchair opinion or your own lived experience?
Anyway while on paper this is true, in practice kids will ask for this and may get it as a treat, or they may get it from somewhere else. And as a one-off, that's fine, but they do get influenced by ads to want more of it at any time. Same with fast food chains, somehow the ones that aren't available where I live got an almost mythical status with the teenager here. A Taco Bell did open here but honestly it was mediocre and overpriced.
Indeed, it's unrealistic to expect all kids would be served food and observed while eating.
So.. then.. why are we advertising to them _at all_?
That children are a part of the decision making process is the failure.
The advertising works on the child, and ultimately the child (and the advert...directly to some extent but largely through the child) induces the parent to obtain the product.
I don’t think this is true in practice; it feels sufficiently obvious that children’s tastes influence what they get fed that I’m not going to bother to find a citation
The red car and the blue car had a race
Turn the milk chocolatey
Keep hunger locked up tip lunch
I have tried to avoid adverts for 20 years, but the adverts of my childhood (not just ones aimed at kids - autoglass repair and replace, safe style do buy one get one free, dfs sale ends Sunday, ronseal quick drying wood stain does exactly what it says on the tin)
The brainwashing is sickening.
Kids don't have the defenses against manipulation, especially when it's refined by billions in research dollars and decades of work by scientists and psychologists dedicated to exploiting their young minds.
Research has shown that kids (even into their teens) can't tell the difference between ads and content. They don't even know an ad when they see one, and the line between ad and content is often intentionally blurred. I've even seen adults struggle to identify ads when they're right in their face.
Damn, someone better ring up the cereal companies and tell them to stop advertising, I bet they'll feel foolish realizing they've wasted all that money!
Perhaps then we can appreciate a world without ads more.
It might also reduce the environmental burden of overconsumption.
It's the same (opposite) feeling you get when watching an ad free streaming service and the switch to live TV or Prime. Which is just like switching to a browser with out uBO.
If society went 30 days with a universal uBO experience, I think all wars would end, cats & dogs sleeping together, shields would become plow. You know, basically peace on earth.
Deleted Comment
> Breakfast cereals including ready-to-eat cereals, granola, muesli, porridge oats and other oat-based cereals.
until I re-read and saw this:
> But the new restrictions will not apply to healthier options such as natural porridge oats and unsweetened yoghurt.
So I think it's not clear in the first sentence but "ready-to-eat" is meant to apply to all the items in the list and not just the cereals.
Breakfast cereals contain a colossal amount of sugar, and are a great way to keep your diabetes on its toes. They haven't been healthy for years, moreover the toys they put in them have been shit as well.
That's what pisses me the fuck off. Even Kinder toys have been shit for decades.
Deleted Comment
In my mind porridge oats are natural and you don't have to say that. If you have something else you need to say so.
All porridge oats are "in scope" of the regulation, which means they need to be scored using the "Nutrient Profile Model" score before being advertised.
The result is that porridge oats are not banned, but golden syrup instant porridge oats will be.
Here's the scoring model: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nutrient-prof...
[0] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ldselect/ldmfdo...
Does that not seem like an overreach? Its not like 4 year olds are driving to McDonald's by themselves and ordering burgers. The parents are the ones being targeted here.
Would you allow salespeople into your home to pitch your kids on stuff all day if they were in-person instead of on a screen?
Why not complain about the overreach of irresponsible companies trying to convince kids who have no way of knowing better to start damaging their long-term health?
But that's the way I choose to parent my child. If another parent wants their children to watch TV and be exposed to those ads then they should have every right. I'm not going to make a moral decision for them and I don't think the government should either.
In the longer term, stuff that enters your brain as a child shapes you and lasts long. See how well how many people in their 30s remember ads of their childhood.
Why would someone defend such ads anyway? I don't believe they achieve anything good for anyone except the advertiser.
Even if the majority of citizens agreed that forcing their morality on the minority is the right thing to do I still disagree because individual freedom is more important than majority opinion.
The government would have to spend a lot of money on counter-campaigns to keep the public well informed and it probably wouldn't have the desired effect on children.
Finally, and this is a very important point for me, children cannot enter into business deals/contracts; commercials are business proposals; hence there should be no ads targeting children.
Stand outside any school gate in the UK and you will see that the majority of parents "aren't responsible enough to make dietary decisions for their children".
I'm fairly relaxed about it simply because this is a response to the behaviour of these corporations.
In reality, this law is only about advertising, specifically about making it slightly harder to target children with advertising for junk food in a country that already has a serious problem with obesity.
The level of reading comprehension on this website really is astonishingly low. It's about restrictions on advertising, not bans on products.
I really loathe these sort of “gotcha” comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJmM2CSn2ao