Consumer protection laws in Quebec are not enough to protect children from online junk food advertising.
“Tell me your Halloween costume. This tweet was posted on Halloween by one of Canada’s largest fast food chains to its more than 168,000 Twitter followers. Considering the style, spelling and demand, what age group do you think it is aimed at? There is only one answer, of course: our young people.
Since 1980, Quebec has had one of the best consumer protection laws protecting children from advertising, at least in theory. And yet, in practice, there are huge gaps when it comes to online advertising of unhealthy foods and beverages targeting children.
Our new study1 Canadian social media survey conducted in 2020 – funded by Heart & Stroke – presents alarming statistics. And some obvious paths forward for Quebec and federal policymakers.
We note in our study that the top 40 food and beverage brands in categories often targeting children and youth in Canada tweeted more than 30,000 times (that’s more than 80 times per day). Most of the messages came from the big fast food chains.
We also found that in just one year, the top 40 brands were mentioned in user-generated content 16.9 million times in Canada on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr and YouTube – tweets alone were seen potentially about 491 billion times.
If you think kids aren’t part of that social media audience, think again: 44% of Canadian kids said they used social media two to four hours a day in a 2018 report, and 20%, five hours or more per day.
The inescapable conclusion is that our children are bombarded every day with incentives to consume unhealthy foods and beverages.
Many children succumb to temptation, leading to poor nutrition, health problems now and later, and a shorter life expectancy. The pervasiveness of unhealthy food advertising on social media is harming our children and increasing pressures on our health care system.
The Consumer Protection Act du Québec is not rigorous enough to protect children from online junk food advertising. Ads are not routinely monitored by the government, and although the law applies to online advertising targeting children, children in Quebec may still see advertising of unhealthy foods that do not have child-appealing characteristics. or actual product (brand advertising).
Social media’s Wild West for advertising unhealthy food and beverages could be brought under control under new federal government regulations to limit exposure of children under 13 to advertising such products. These regulations could apply alongside those of Quebec to help fill the gaps and better protect children.
Federal adoption of these restrictions is long overdue, but if the regulations do not include social media, they will be significantly less effective. The industry could exploit this loophole if it does, and the onslaught of social media advertising could actually increase.
Young people are a captive audience on social media. The food and beverage industry knows this, and already devotes a significant portion of its spending to online advertising.
New federal regulations that limit the advertising of unhealthy foods would further reduce children’s exposure to this type of advertising in Quebec and help parents encourage the consumption of healthy foods in their children. To achieve this, it is essential that these regulations be exhaustive and cover all media and environments where children are present, otherwise the advertising bombardment will continue.
The federal government has announced its healthy eating strategy2 as one of his key commitments shortly after taking office in 2015, but we are still awaiting passage of these crucial restrictions on unhealthy food advertising.
There is an urgent need to adopt these restrictions, which must include social media.