Children's Health Defense By
By Jessica Corbett
Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University revealed on Dec. 27, 2023, that social media giants made nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue from U.S.-based users younger than 18 last year.
“As concerns about youth mental health grow, more and more policymakers are trying to introduce legislation to curtail social media platform practices that may drive depression, anxiety, and disordered eating in young people,” said senior author Dr. Bryn Austin, a professor and founding director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders.
“Although social media platforms may claim that they can self-regulate their practices to reduce the harms to young people, they have yet to do so,” she continued, “and our study suggests they have overwhelming financial incentives to continue to delay taking meaningful steps to protect children.”
For the study, published Dec. 27 in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers focused on Google’s YouTube; Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram; Snapchat; TikTok; and Twitter — which its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, recently rebranded as X.
“This is the first known study to estimate social media platform-specific advertising revenue from youth,” the researchers noted.
They continued:
“There were several limitations to our study methods and analysis. We heavily relied upon secondary estimated and projected data, as well as the assumption that youth and adults may see a similar number of advertisements; however… social media platforms do not publicly disclose any data on user base ages, nor the advertising revenue generated from them.”
To build their simulation model, the team used 2021-22 data from Common Sense Media and Pew Research surveys, the market research company eMarketer, the parental control application Qustodio and the U.S. Census Bureau…
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