May 20, 2019
They can be purposefully confusing for children, who cannot distinguish between the game and the advertisement.
“The other day my cousin came over with her grandson. He’s 4 or 5 years old and spent some time getting used to it, playing on his cell phone.
Suddenly, when I got close, I saw that in the middle of the game the following images appeared, which advertise games with firearms. Real madness!!”
We recently received this message, accompanied by the images below:
In 2018, researchers at the University of Michigan (USA) discovered, through a study on the presence of advertising specifically in children's apps , that 95% of the apps they evaluated showed some type of ad, including some that described themselves as “educational”. The researchers concluded that apps aimed at children — more specifically those for children under the age of 5 — have high levels of advertising, delivered with tactics that they classified as manipulative and disruptive.
Although ads are more common in free apps, they are also present in paid apps. In the survey, 100% of the free apps and 88% of the paid apps analyzed showed ads. These ads generally aim to manipulate the child into making a purchase, either within the app itself or outside. In addition, apps sometimes collect and use user data to display “more relevant” ads, that is, they use the child and their data as a sales and revenue-generating tool.
The ads in question can be purposefully confusing for children, who cannot distinguish between the game and the advertisement. This is especially serious for children under 8 years old, as they are too young to have enough critical sense to make this distinction. In this way, the ads act as a trap for children to make purchases without even realizing it. Other times, as in the case shared at the beginning of the text, the content is highly inappropriate for children, exposing children to violent and frightening images.
What about children's rights?
According to article 37 of the Consumer Protection Code, advertising to children under 12 years of age is an abusive practice. Resolution 163 of the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents reinforces that it is illegal and abusive to direct advertising or “marketing communication” to this age group.
Based on this, advertising in children's apps is illegal and exposing children to ads within apps aimed at them violates their rights.
How to deal with the issue?
When downloading games and applications for little ones, it's worth:
- analyze whether the application has ads;
- confirm whether you have personalized ads, which is an indication that they collect user data;
- Play the game with your child for the first few times to make sure there is no abusive advertising that could violate their rights. If the game is not suitable, talk to your child about why and look for other possibilities together, reading reviews and testing together.
And, if you come across abusive advertisements, you can report them through the Children and Consumption initiative's reporting channel .