Rules needed to protect kids against embedded marketing

A meeting of top health promotion experts in Melbourne has heard growing calls to close digital advertising loopholes to protect children from “invisible” junk food advertising.

Junk food advertising has become “invisible” to children, who are now largely unable to detect what is being promoted to them amid the increased prevalence of embedding marketing within games, the schoolyard, sporting field and social media posts.

A meeting of top health promotion experts in Melbourne has heard growing calls to close digital advertising loopholes and develop new regulations to govern posts of social media influencers.

Curtin University Professor Simone Pettigrew.

University of Melbourne Professor of Public Health Rob Moodie told the Public Health Association Australia’s Unhealthy Marketing to Kids forum there was “virtually no control” around the digital media advertising that children were now exposed to. “It’s no longer just through the standard messages on packaging, where items are placed in the supermarket and sport sponsorship, but now there’s a blurring between entertainment and advertising,” Prof Moodie said.

“There are advergames, kids are pressured to recruit their friends and you’ve got young children as influencers.

“Governments need to step in on behalf of children. It’s a child’s right not to be exploited.”

A third of Australian preschool children have their own tablet or smartphone, and a sixth of primary school pupils have their own social media account, according to recent survey by the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Curtin University Professor Simone Pettigrew said children were subjected to unhealthy advertisements in all areas of their life and they needed to be protected.

“A lot of the time kids don’t even know they’re being promoted to. It’s embedded in their online games, music videos and real-world content,” Prof Pettigrew said.

“We need to be more informed, we need more regulation and we need social media personalities to be forced to disclose when they’ve been paid to promote something.”

Children are largely unable to detect what is being promoted to them.

Prof Pettigrew said brain scanning technology was now able to detect what areas of the brain were activated in response to junk food ads.

“If you show adults and kids an ad for a food high in sugar, fat and salt, the MRI shows kids’ brains ping much bigger in the motivation area than adults do,” he said. “If we look at overweight children, then their response is even bigger.

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“This is all happening at a subconscious level, and we’ve got industries able to capitalise on these effects in ways that are getting beyond us now.

“We’re not able to even assess what’s going on, let alone react to it.”

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