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Media headlines, business figures and analysis affirm what many dad and mom suspect: advertising and marketing to kids has not solely grown in scale but additionally in sophistication.
It now occurs in a greater diversity of contexts, each bodily and digital, and in a extra systematic, built-in and customized approach than ever earlier than.
Youngsters in Aotearoa New Zealand are rising up in a industrial setting in contrast to any earlier technology. Promoting is not simply one thing they see between TV packages. It is woven into their bodily setting and the digital platforms they use to be taught, play and socialize.
Our new analysis confirmed simply how pervasive this publicity is. We used information from the sooner Youngsters’Cam observational examine, which tracked 90 New Zealand kids’s real-world experiences utilizing wearable cameras that captured what they had been taking a look at from waking as much as going to sleep.
On common, we discovered kids encountered advertising and marketing for “unhealthy” merchandise—junk meals, alcohol and playing, 76 occasions per day. That is virtually two-and-a-half occasions greater than their each day publicity to “healthy” advertising and marketing.
Coca-Cola topped the record of most steadily encountered manufacturers, showing 6.3 occasions a day on common. The findings additionally present stark inequalities. Youngsters from extra socioeconomically disadvantaged areas had been uncovered to considerably extra unhealthy advertising and marketing for junk meals.
Why publicity issues
Promoting directed at kids extends far past merely selling merchandise. It profoundly shapes their cognitive, social and behavioral growth.
Analysis has proven it will probably spark a right away need for merchandise and contribute to battle between kids and fogeys.
It will possibly additionally affect the formation of broader consumption values and wishes. Promoting publicity has been linked to elevated materialism, by associating possessions with happiness and success.
Nonetheless, materialism is constantly related to decrease shallowness, lowered well-being, and weaker social relationships as a result of it shifts focus away from intrinsic sources of success resembling private development and connection.
Furthermore, advertising and marketing performs a pivotal position in shaping kids’s beliefs, attitudes and social norms.
There may be proof connecting promoting to the internalization of gender and racial stereotypes and distorted physique picture. It has additionally been linked to the early use of dangerous merchandise resembling tobacco and alcohol.
Promoting has been discovered to have an effect on dietary habits, with sustained publicity to meals promoting considerably rising the danger of childhood weight problems.
Weak to affect
Youngsters are uniquely susceptible to the affect of promoting as they lack the essential reasoning abilities to acknowledge and consider persuasive intent.
Within the on-line setting the place promoting is embedded in video games, influencer content material and social feeds, kids are particularly susceptible.
Our examine discovered a transparent sample. The much less regulation there’s, the upper the publicity.
Tobacco advertising and marketing, which is tightly regulated, was not often encountered by the kids in our examine. Alcohol and playing—regulated by a patchwork of legal guidelines and voluntary codes—appeared reasonably usually. However junk meals advertising and marketing, virtually solely self-regulated by business, dominated what they noticed.
Greater than half of the unhealthy meals and alcohol advertising and marketing kids noticed got here from simply 15 multinational corporations. This highlights the systemic nature of the issue, in addition to the sources behind it. These corporations have the cash to spend on advertising and marketing these dangerous merchandise to kids.
Taking motion
Worldwide businesses such because the United Nations have warned that exploitative advertising and marketing is a serious international menace to kids’s well being.
To answer this rising hurt, governments have to:
shield kids by complete regulation limiting junk meals, alcohol and playing advertising and marketing, just like what already exists for tobacco
introduce restrictions on product packaging for unhealthy merchandise, which the examine discovered was a key medium for advertising and marketing
conduct additional analysis to know the digital advertising and marketing setting, particularly to determine disparities in concentrating on primarily based on ethnicity, gender or socioeconomic standing.
This isn’t nearly defending kids’s innocence. It is about defending their well being, autonomy and future alternatives. Left unchecked, the present industrial setting dangers deepening well being inequities and normalizing dangerous consumption patterns from an early age.
Aotearoa New Zealand has the prospect to guide efforts to create a digital and bodily setting the place industrial pursuits don’t undermine kids’s rights and well-being.
That requires shifting past voluntary codes in the direction of enforceable protections—grounded in proof, public well being priorities and fairness. If we do not act now, we threat commodifying childhood itself.
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Commodifying childhood: NZ kids see advertising and marketing for unhealthy merchandise 76 occasions a day (2025, August 23)
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