Researchers call for tougher policies to protect children from unhealthy food marketing on TikTok

27 Jul 2022 --- Unhealthy F&B brands are encouraging TikTok users to market their products for them – effectively turning them into “brand ambassadors” – and using their own accounts for promotional activity. The evidence has revealed that this exposure to children ultimately influences food preferences, purchasing, requests and consumption.

The findings have been published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health and emphasize the need for policies protecting children from the harmful impact of this type of marketing on social media, flag the researchers.

Social media influence 
TikTok users create, post, watch and engage with short videos. Since its release, the social media platform’s popularity has rapidly increased. Its global monthly active users reportedly rose from 55 million in January 2018 to 1 billion in September 2021.

And it is popular with children: over a third of its daily users in the US are reportedly aged 14 or younger.

Yet no study to date has looked at the impact of unhealthy food marketing on TikTok, despite calls for attention to be paid to the health implications of the platform, the researchers underscore.

To plug this knowledge gap, the researchers assessed the content of all videos posted on the accounts of 16 leading food and non-alcoholic beverage brands – based on global brand share as of June 30, 2021. 

The content and sentiment of a sample of relevant user-generated content created in response to branded hashtag challenges instigated by these brands were also assessed.

Children are exposed to a vast amount of unhealthy – high in salt, sugar and fat – food marketing online.Some 539 videos had been posted on 16 included accounts, with 3% (17) published in 2019], 37% (198) in 2020, and 60% (324) in the first six months of 2021. Four accounts had not posted any videos. 

The number of followers of the included accounts ranged from 14 to 1.6 million. Videos received an average of 63,400 views, 5,829 likes, 157 comments and 36 shares per video.

The most common marketing strategies were branding (87% of videos), product images (85%), engagement (31%) and celebrities/ influencers (25%). 

Engagement included instigating branded hashtag challenges that encouraged the creation of user-generated content featuring brands’ products, videos and/or branded effects, such as stickers, filters, or special effects featuring branding. 

The total collective views of user-generated content from single challenges ranged from 12.7 million to 107.9 billion. Among a sample of 626 brand-relevant videos generated in response to these challenges, 96% featured branding, 68% product images and 41% branded effects. 

Most portrayed a positive (73%) or neutral/unclear (25%) sentiment, with few portraying a negative (3%) sentiment.

Promotional activity analyzed 
The study is observational, so it cannot establish causality, state the researchers. They acknowledge that the sampled user-generated content may not represent a branded hashtag challenge. Nor were they able to measure children’s exposure to brands’ promotional activities or user-generated content.

But they say: “Brand activity has rapidly increased – with most videos posted in the six months preceding data collection – and includes instigating branded hashtag challenges that encourage user-generated content featuring brand products, brand-supplied videos or branded effects.

“Analysis of a sample of brand-relevant user-generated content created in response to these showed that branded hashtag challenges are effectively turning users into, in TikTok’s words, ‘unofficial brand ambassadors.’”

While fewer videos were posted by users who seem to have been paid (influencers, for example), these attracted nearly ten times as many likes per video, on average, as those seemingly not paid for and are therefore likely important in propagating branded hashtag challenges, the researchers outline. 

“The substantial reach of influencer marketing is concerning given that exposure to influencer marketing of unhealthy foods has been shown to increase energy intake (from unhealthy foods and overall),” they write.

And the researchers also highlight that proposed UK legislation will ban all ‘paid-for’ online marketing of ‘less healthy food and drink’ from January 2023. The researchers acknowledge that the sampled user-generated content may not have represented a branded hashtag challenge.

But it includes an exemption for brand-only advertising and excludes marketing originating outside the UK, even though social networking platforms frequently operate across international borders. 

“Our study has shown that TikTok is an emerging source of unhealthy food marketing, including that created by users at the instigation of brands. Given TikTok’s popularity among children, our findings support the need for policies that protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, including that on social networking platforms,” explain the researchers.

“TikTok’s rising popularity also calls for further research into its potential impact on public health and its role as a corporate political actor,” they conclude. 

The impact on children
According to recent analysis, UK figures for childhood obesity were supposed to halve by 2030. Still, predictions have revealed that, if current trends persist, childhood obesity will increase by 15% among four to five-year-olds and 20% among ten to eleven-year-olds.

The World Health Organization recently flagged the harmful impact of food marketing on children. With childhood overweight and obesity increasingly becoming global public health concerns, the organization addresses the pressing issue by outlining food market threats and governments’ responsibilities. 

Meanwhile, Unilever previously raised the age for restricting F&B marketing to children aged between 13-16 in recognition of the influence social media and digital adverts can have on young people.

Edited by Elizabeth Green