US food marketing to teens and the under-13 pledge explained
- A JAMA Pediatrics study estimated that US teens aged 13-17 see about 10,100 food and drink pitches a year on phones and tablets – roughly seven times as many as children aged 8-12.
- The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative applies to ads aimed primarily at under-13s, leaving the age group with the highest estimated exposure outside the pledge.
- TikTok and YouTube accounted for 53% of recorded food marketing, while unpaid posts and shares accounted for nearly 44% across all channels.
- Of the 2,660 non-restaurant food and drink items assessed, 91.6% failed to meet the Pan American Health Organization’s nutrient profile standards.
Teenagers aged 13-17 in the US encounter an estimated 28 food and drink pitches a day on their phones and tablets, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers ranked the annual estimates from lowest to highest in each age group. The median (middle) figure was 1,427 food and drink pitches for tweens aged 8-12 and 10,107 for teens. Across both age groups, it was 3,883. The US food industry’s voluntary pledge applies to ads aimed primarily at children under 13. Yet the group outside that commitment saw about seven times as much food and drink marketing as the younger children it’s designed to protect.
The researchers, led by Lisa M Powell, Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Administration at the University of Illinois Chicago and director of its Food Policy Research Program, recorded 30 minutes of leisure screen time for each of the 1,011 participants aged 8-17 between November 2024 and October 2025. They combined the recordings with participants’ reports of how much time they spent on phones and tablets outside schoolwork – an average of 3.7 hours a day – to estimate annual exposure.
Fast food topped the list, accounting for 28.8% of the 6,896 food and drink items that appeared across 5,154 instances of marketing. Sweets followed at 20.4%, just ahead of drinks at 20.1%. Of the 2,660 non-restaurant items assessed, 91.6% failed to meet the Pan American Health Organization’s nutrient profile standards.
Nearly half the marketing came from unpaid posts and shares
Social media accounted for 82.6% of the marketing researchers recorded. TikTok alone made up 30.4% and YouTube another 22.6%, giving the two platforms more than half of all the food and drink marketing seen during the sessions.
“This approach provides a real-world picture of young people’s exposure across digital platforms, including social media, web browsing and mobile games,” said Prof Powell. She described it as the first US study, to her knowledge, to use real-time screen recordings to measure youth exposure to food marketing across digital platforms.
Prof Powell said limiting the study to smartphones and tablets may have led her team to underestimate how much marketing young people see across all their devices. The researchers also excluded messaging apps, which she said may have pushed participants towards social media, browsing and games, where they could have encountered more marketing. “It’s also possible that our participants changed their online behaviour knowing they were being recorded,” she said.
Paid marketing made up 52.4% of the total, including content from sponsored third parties. Unpaid posts and shares accounted for another 43.9%, while 3.7% came from channels the companies owned.
A brand can choose the creator it pays and ask the platform for a breakdown of who saw the ad. It has less visibility when an independent taste test takes off or viewers start sharing clips. That can put the same product in front of young audiences without those views showing up in the brand’s paid campaign report.
The pledge stops at 13, just where exposure jumps
Nearly 47% of the food and drink items recorded came from companies participating in the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). The pledge covers digital media, including influencer content and gaming, and its nutrition requirements apply when ads are aimed primarily at under-13s. The initiative generally treats programming as child-directed when at least 30% of its audience is under 13, although some members use a 25% threshold.
BBB National Programs, the independent US non-profit that runs the initiative, reported ‘excellent compliance’ among the CFBAI’s 21 participating companies in its review of 2024 activity. The study, however, measured what tweens and teens actually saw, including products in unpaid posts, and assessed non-restaurant items against a different nutrition standard. To establish whether a placement breached the pledge, you’d need to know who the ad was aimed at and whether the product met the CFBAI’s own criteria.
Prof Powell said paid TV advertising is relatively straightforward to measure. On digital platforms, where a product can appear in a sponsored video, a company’s own feed or an unpaid review, the job gets harder. “Marketing in the digital landscape is more complex, and regulating it will be more challenging,” she said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends mandatory restrictions that protect children of all ages from marketing foods high in saturated fat, trans fat, free sugars or salt. The UK has taken a product-based approach to paid online ads. Since 5 January 2026, restrictions have applied to ads for identifiable less healthy products in scope, subject to exemptions. A brand planning to run the same campaign in the US and UK may therefore have to make different decisions about which products it features and where it can advertise them.
What brands should ask before backing a post
A media plan should start with three questions. How old is the creator’s audience? What age breakdown can the platform provide for the people the campaign actually reached? Which products in the brief qualify under the relevant nutrition criteria? The answers will help a brand decide whether to renew a creator deal, put paid support behind a post or feature a different product in its next launch.
There’s good reason to ask those questions together. If a brand is developing a snack for a launch that depends on paid social, for example, finding out too late that it falls outside the applicable nutrition criteria might mean reworking the creative or shifting the media budget. And if an unpaid review takes off, the brand can decide whether to repost it, turn it into an ad or leave it alone.
When an agency pitches a snack campaign on the strength of its reach, there’s one figure worth asking for before signing off on the next round of spend – how much of that reach was among under-18s?
Study:
Powell LM, Marinello S, Leider J, et al. Youth Exposure to Food and Beverage Marketing on Digital Media Platforms. JAMA Pediatr. Published online November 09, 2026. http://doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2026.5190
