In today's generation, everything can be done and accessed in just one click. Sadly we can't control what kids can and can't access online or even on their smartphones. With kids as young as 9years old having smartphones, who knows what they're accessing, right?
Kids as young as 13 may be overwhelmed with ads from the alcohol industry on social media, and while some social networking sites like Twitter having an age-gate that blocks direct-to-phone updates for users who are under age, Instagram, which is considered to be one of the most popular SNS among young people, does not have age limit meaning that anyone who has a smart phone can sign-up and use it, according to a new study.
Lead author Adam E. Barry, of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas said he's surprised to know about what he found out knowing that age-gate technology is readily available on these social media platforms and can be easily implemented.
Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), an alcohol industry trade association, released a self-regulation guidance memo declaring that digital marketing communications are meant for adults who can legally purchase the product and should only be put up in social media where approximately 71.6 percent of the population is of legal age, and the brand advertiser's pages should confirm the age of the user before making any interaction about the product.
Based on the findings of the new study on Twitter and Instagram, the industry is not conforming to this regulation guidance, Barry said.
He also informed Reuters Health by email and said that while it is not illegal to expose underage young people to alcohol advertising/promotions, he believed that it is improper to intentionally promote alcohol advertising to under-aged people given that these advertisements may influence the young person to start alcohol use, as well as how much alcohol a person can consume.
The researchers started by setting up 10 Twitter and 10 Instagram profiles for imaginary users ages 13, 15, 17, 19 or 21. With these profiles, the researchers tried to initiate contact with alcohol advertising content by trying to retweet, comment, or share alcohol industry posts or follow official Instagram and Twitter profiles for 22 alcohol brands for a month.
All the profiles had no problem accessing, viewing and communicating with alcohol containing posts, the researchers wrote in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.
The difference was spotted when on Twitter, profiles made for kids underage 21 couldn't follow or receive promotional advertisements from alcohol brands. However those profiles made for 21 years old, received almost 2,000 tweets about alcohol and other related stuff. On Instagram however, since there is no age-gate, all underage profiles could follow alcohol brand accounts and was almost receiving 362 ads during the study. The researchers also found out that promotional updates are usually most frequent on Thursdays and Friday, and that alcohol brand Instagram accounts replied directly to an underage user's comments.