Consumer

Social media, junk food, and malnutrition. Just a Click

March 31, 2019

The use of ‘influencer‘ e ‘social media‘ to promote junk food affects children’s food choices with negative effects on diet and health. The recent study by the University of Liverpool, on Pediatrics, confirms the significance of our previous complaints, as well as the social irresponsibility and moral unworthiness of Big Food. There is an urgent need to tax food

HFSS

(

High Fats, Sugar and Sodium

). And prohibit all forms of advertising, including the ‘

product placement

‘

. While Europe

and Italy

latent, WHO is proposing that member states adopt a special method, the ‘

Click Tool

‘.

Social media
, impact on children and minors

The classic television, as has already been amply demonstrated, is capable of luring children and minors into asking their parents to buy junk food. Snacks and Nutella, chips and snacks, breakfast cereals with nutritional profiles unbalanced even for Godzilla are promoted by celebrities and/or through ‘bombing‘ advertisement. With effectiveness on sales, epidemic of childhood obesity

and related diseases

.

The real success

of the evil empire, however, is due to the viralization of junk food marketing through ‘

social networks

‘

. The reason is simple. According to a recent report by Ofcom (UK Communications Services Authority):

age 8-11, 93% of children are online, 77% use YouTube, and 18% have social media accounts,
in ages 12-15, 99% of teens regularly access the web, 89% use YouTube, and 69% have social media accounts.

Minors in Italy active on Facebook are about 4 percent of the total (31 million active/month), 9.5 percent on Instagram (19 million active/month, Social Media Observatory data). ‘Influencers‘ at the mercy of marketing-now called ‘vloggers‘ (from ‘video blogs,’ a form of ‘blogging’ that uses video combined with text, voices, images and other metadata)-reap millions of views from children and teenagers.

Social media
e
junk food
, the Liverpool study

The randomized scientific study by the University of Liverpool’s ‘Appetite and Obesity‘ research group measured the effect of ‘social media marketing,’ particularly through vloggers‘ Instagram pages, on children’s snack intake process (healthy and unhealthy). (1) 176 children between the ages of 9 and 11 were divided into three equal groups and subjected to viewing the fictitious but plausible Instagram pages of vloggers followed by millions of young users(followers). The first group was shown pictures of vloggers promoting junk food, the second group influencers with healthy snacks, and the third group videos with non-food products. Next, the participants’ snack intake and Kcal energy intake (in the two options of healthy and junk food) were assessed.

Children who viewed videos with unhealthy snacks consumed 26% more total energy (from healthy and unhealthy snacks) and 32% more kcal from HFSS foods, compared with those who viewed food-free images. Conversely, no significant difference was found in energy intake between the two groups of children who saw vloggers with fruits and vegetables compared with those who saw pictures of high-calorie sweets. In conclusion, according to the researchers, ‘social media marketing’ of HFSS foods has a negative influence on the quality and quantity of food intake in children. The promotion of healthy foods, on the other hand, produced no major effect.

Junk food
and advertising, WHO recommendations

The unbalanced diets globally are the cause of one in five deaths, according to the study ‘Global Burden of Disease’ (GBD), the largest ever conducted (covering 195 countries over 20 years), published in 2017 in The Lancet. In the European macro-region, non-communicable diseases (

Non-Communicable Diseases

,

NCD

) are the leading cause of premature mortality planetwide. NCDs-which include cardiovascular and chronic diseases including the

diabetes

, in addition to cancers

– account for 86 percent of deaths and 77 percent of the social burden of disease.

L’WHO (World Health Organization) therefore states that work should be done on preventing risk factors by promoting the adoption of balanced diets, starting from childhood. To this end, he made precise recommendations, on the need to introduce:

nutritional profiles, suitable for identifying (processed and ultra-processed) HFSS foods. To promote their reformulation and the reduction of consumption of unbalanced foods,
strict constraints

to marketing and advertising, including that on the web and social networks

.

The WHO report
Europe
‘monitoring and restricting digital marketing of unhealthy products to children and adolescents’ (WHO Europe, June 2018) exposes the laxity of governments and public health institutions with respect to this serious health threat to children and youth. Even where efforts have been made-and this is, unfortunately, not the case in Italy-these are thwarted by rapid changes in digital information and related marketing strategies.

Junk food
and advertising, the (vain) efforts made by some European states

Some European states have already implemented policies to mitigate the exposure of children and young people to the wild marketing of junk food.

– The United Kingdom banned the advertising of HFSS products on channels dedicated to children and those where children represent at least 24 percent of the audience. Transport for London (the company responsible for public transportation in the Greater London) revised its advertising policy last month, banning the promotion of HFSS food and beverage products on metropolitan networks.

–

Spain

has implemented two self-regulatory systems, which prohibit the promotion of junk food to children under 15 on the Internet, to children under 12 in other media.

–
Ireland
has implemented a voluntary code of conduct restricting advertising of HFSS foods, with a special rule dedicated to social media. ‘
Marketing communications for HFSS foods through social media should not be directed to children under the age of 15 years’
.

–

Norway

has in turn implemented a self-regulatory scheme that restricts marketing specifically to children under the age of 13.

–

Latvia and Lithuania

have limited themselves to restricting the sale of energy drinks to young people under the age of 18.

Poor and ineffective measures

to reverse the course of childhood obesity, overweight, and malnutrition, which are on the rise in the old continent and especially in countries bordering the Mediterranean

. In all evidence, the voluntary measures taken have not been worthwhile in reducing the exposure of children and young people to viral marketing of nutritionally imbalanced foods.

WHO, the CLICK method

The CLICK method(the Click tool) was developed by WHO to enable member states to measure the effectiveness of their policies to prevent and control the ‘marketing to kids‘ of junk food. With a five-step monitoring program that provides a uniform approach to understanding and mapping the digital marketing scenario on a global, national and regional scale.

The five steps of the ‘Click Tool‘:

C, ‘
Comprehend the digital ecosystem
‘. Mapping the digital marketing ecosystem (global, national and regional), children’s websites, app usage. Work in groups, to assess the experience of children and parents or guardians and awareness of marketing techniques and campaigns,
L, ‘Landscape of campaigns‘.

Evaluate campaigns run by leading national brands, collect

information from advertising agencies, exploring international social media. To examine the content viewed by users in different age groups,
I, ‘Investigate exposure‘.

Select samples of children divided by age group to monitor with an app data on children’s interaction with advertisements on certain websites and social media,
C, ‘
Capture on-screen
‘. Use dedicated software to take pictures of what a representative sample of children actually see on their devices to better understand marketing strategies, including user-generated content (and instant and/or temporary content that is made to disappear before the intervention of those who are supposed to oversee its correctness, we add),
K, ‘
Knowledge sharing
‘. Create simple research outputs that enable the development of partnerships with youth, parents, policymakers and civic leaders. To force change, raise awareness and influence policy.

Legislative interventions, and responsibilities of WHO member states.

Legislative interventions must follow the mapping, understanding and measurement of junk food ‘social media marketing’ aimed at children, adolescents and youth. WHO recommends that member states adopt restrictions that should be extended on a global scale. To stop the advertising of HFSS foods aimed at minors in all media, especially digital media. To this end, the report points to three essential criteria, which governments such as educational and health institutions, as well as civil society, must carefully consider:

1) effective verification of the age of online users (who today can very easily circumvent the ambiguous limits set by social networks, the writer adds)

2) constraints on access and identification with appropriate ‘warnings‘ to marketing campaigns whose content must come reserved for adult audiences (what should also be done to prevent minors from accessing violent and child pornographic content, we add)

3) Prohibition of junk food marketing, even indirectly or disguised in the form of ‘product placement,’ on all vlogs or other information and sharing tools aimed at minors. On YouTube and every other digital platform.

Dario Dongo and Giulia Baldelli

Notes

(1) Anna E. Coates, Charlotte A. Hardman, Jason C. G. Halford, Paul Christiansen, Emma J. Boyland (2019). ‘Social Media Influencer Marketing and Children’s Food Intake: A Randomized Trial’. Pediatrics, Mar 2019, e20182554. doi: 10.1542/peds.2018-2554