Digital marketing to young people: Consequences for the health and diets of future generations

Digital marketing is widely used to promote highly processed food and beverage products with excessive energy and high in fat, sugars and salt (HFSS) to young people, negatively impacting their diet and health. In this paper, we describe the global trends in digital marketing used to promote unhealthy HFSS products to children, adolescents and young adults aged 7 to 24 years. We review the digital privacy policies of 18 major transnational firms — six technology and 12 international food and beverage companies — to promote food and beverage products, brands and healthy and sustainable lifestyles to young people. Our analysis shows that four of the six technology firms have privacy-protection policies for children under 13 years, but that no firm has a digital marketing policy to restrict the targeting of HFSS food and beverage products to young people. Only one of the 12 food and beverage companies studied has publicly pledged not to use digital marketing to promote HFSS food and beverage products to adolescents (aged 13–18). Governments must develop comprehensive privacy-protection laws that restrict firms from using digital marketing to promote HFSS products to young people and only allow products that meet healthy nutrient-profile criteria. Global and national actors should encourage these 18 firms to adopt best practices to use digital marketing to support healthy and sustainable diets, lifestyles and food systems for future generations.