British children are logging onto social media at an increasingly younger age. More than 3.6 million profiles of young people have incorrect ages. Almost two thirds of children are regularly exposed to advertising with older age restrictions. These are the results of a survey commissioned by the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Tech giants then allowed an estimated 1.6 million minors on social media to create accounts by pretending to be over 18 years old.
Appeal : Don't show age-restricted advertising to kids
The ASA warns that of the 93 percent of users aged 11 to 17 who say they have a social media account, only 24 percent admit they have provided false information about their age. At least eleven percent of the accounts are made up of children with incorrect age information.
Children are logging onto social media at an increasingly early age. At the age of eleven to twelve, 67 percent of the profiles have already been set up before secondary school. According to ASA director Guy Parker, this study is the latest example of how new tools and methods should be developed to actually find out what advertising young people see on websites, social platforms and apps.
Accordingly, Guy said age-restricted advertising marketers should also reconsider their media choices, steer them away from young people and monitor the performance of their campaigns.
“Targeting based on age data alone is unlikely to be sufficient.”
ASA director Guy Parker
Well-founded results
The current study results are part of the ASA's 100 Children Report, which directly monitors children's use of personal devices. The watchdog surveyed an additional 1,000 underage users about their accounts on platforms and directly monitored the smartphones and tablets of 97 children across the UK.
Of the 11,424 ads the kids viewed, only 435 were age-restricted. By providing false information about their age, these children were exposed to almost two-thirds more age-restricted advertisements than their peers who filled out their profiles truthfully.
Source:
Press release
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