For teenagers scrolling TikTok, watching YouTube or playing games on their phones, food marketing is almost impossible to avoid. And it's not always obvious when they're being advertised to.
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics estimates that American teenagers ages 13 to 17 encounter more than 10,000 food marketing messages each year through digital media. Younger children see fewer, but still encounter an estimated 1,400 annually. The findings highlight just how much food promotion has become part of young people's everyday online experiences.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago examined screen recordings from 1,011 children and teenagers ages 8 to 17. Participants spent 30 minutes using their smartphones or tablets for activities such as watching videos, browsing social media and playing games. Researchers then used those recordings and participants' reported daily screen time to estimate how many food marketing messages they might encounter over a year.
Across all ages, the average was nearly 3,900 messages annually. But teenagers encountered far more than younger children, with an estimated 10,107 messages compared with 1,427 among children ages 8 to 12. Exposure was also higher among girls and young people whose parents or guardians had not attended college.
Social media accounted for nearly 83% of the food marketing researchers observed, with TikTok and YouTube together responsible for more than half. Mobile games accounted for another 14%.
And not all those messages came from obvious advertisements.
About 44% of the marketing appeared in unpaid content, such as posts created or shared by social media users. Unlike traditional commercials, these messages can blend into the videos, conversations and entertainment young people already enjoy.
The types of foods being promoted also caught researchers' attention. Fast food accounted for nearly 29% of marketed items, followed by sweets at 20% and beverages at 20%. Among packaged foods and other non-restaurant products evaluated, nearly 92% failed to meet nutritional standards established by the Pan American Health Organization.
Nearly half of the marketed items also came from companies participating in a voluntary industry program intended to improve food advertising practices directed at children. The findings raise questions about how effectively those efforts are limiting young people's exposure to marketing for foods that don't meet nutritional standards.
Lisa Powell, director of the Food Policy Research Program at the University of Illinois Chicago and the study's lead researcher, said digital marketing is more difficult to track than traditional television advertising.
Marketing can appear in videos, games, influencer posts and content shared by friends, making it harder to distinguish advertising from entertainment. That also creates challenges for efforts to limit children's exposure.
The study doesn't tell us whether seeing these messages changed what young people wanted to eat, purchased or actually consumed. It measured how often they encountered food marketing, not how they responded to it.
There are other limitations. Researchers recorded just 30 minutes of device use and estimated annual exposure based on reported screen time. Participants also couldn't use messaging apps during the recordings, and some may have behaved differently because they knew they were being observed.
Still, the findings offer a revealing look at how much food marketing has changed since the days when cereal mascots and fast-food commercials dominated children's advertising.
For parents, the challenge isn't simply recognizing commercials anymore. Food marketing can be woven into the videos, games and social media posts their children encounter every day, often without a clear dividing line between advertising and entertainment.
Funding information was not available in the university news release or the accessible study information.