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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Saturday 30 december 2023

Social media companies made $11

billion in U.S. ad revenue from minors,

Harvard study finds

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and
HALELUYA HADERO
AP Technology Writers
Social media companies
collectively made over $11
billion in U.S. advertising
revenue from minors last
year, according to a study
from the Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health
published on Wednesday.
The researchers say the
findings show a need for
government regulation
of social media since the
companies that stand to This combination of photos shows logos of X, formerly known as
make money from children Twitter, top left; Snapchat, top right; Facebook, bottom left; and
who use their platforms TikTok, bottom right.
have failed to meaningful- Associated Press
ly self-regulate. They note
such regulations, as well the data to estimate how cial incentives to continue
greater transparency from much ad revenue the plat- to delay taking meaningful
tech companies, could forms earned from minors steps to protect children,”
help alleviate harms to in the U.S. said Bryn Austin, a profes-
youth mental health and Researchers and lawmak- sor in the Department of
curtail potentially harmful ers have long focused on Social and Behavioral Sci-
advertising practices that the negative effects stem- ences at Harvard and a
target children and ado- ming from social media senior author on the study.
lescents. platforms, whose person- The platforms themselves
To come up with the rev- ally-tailored algorithms don’t make public how
enue figure, the research- can drive children towards much money they earn
ers estimated the number excessive use. This year, from minors.
of users under 18 on Face- lawmakers in states like Social media platforms are
book, Instagram, Snap- New York and Utah intro- not the first to advertise
chat, TikTok, X (formerly duced or passed legisla- to children, and parents
Twitter) and YouTube in tion that would curb social and experts have long ex-
2022 based on population media use among kids, cit- pressed concerns about
data from the U.S. Cen- ing harms to youth mental marketing to kids online,
sus and survey data from health and other concerns. on television and even in
Common Sense Media Meta, which owns Insta- schools.
and Pew Research. gram and Facebook, is But online ads can be es-
They then used data from also being sued by doz- pecially insidious because
research firm eMarketer, ens of states for allegedly they can be targeted to
now called Insider Intel- contributing to the mental children and because the
ligence, and Qustodio, a health crisis. line between ads and the
parental control app, to “Although social media content kids seek out is of-
estimate each platform’s platforms may claim that ten blurry.
U.S. ad revenue in 2022 they can self-regulate their In a 2020 policy paper,
and the time children practices to reduce the the American Academy
spent per day on each harms to young people, of Pediatrics said children
platform. After that, the they have yet to do so, and are “uniquely vulnerable
researchers said they built our study suggests they to the persuasive effects of
a simulation model using have overwhelming finan- advertising because of im-
mature critical thinking skills
and impulse inhibition.”
“School-aged children
and teenagers may be
able to recognize advertis-
ing but often are not able
to resist it when it is embed-
ded within trusted social
networks, encouraged by
celebrity influencers, or
delivered next to personal-
ized content,” the paper
noted.q