Advocating safeguards to the digital marketing of unhealthy foods to children and adolescents, 2012-2013

This grant continues to support the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) in addressing emerging opportunities in digital-privacy policy and industry self-regulation to reduce youths' exposure to interactive, digital forms of marketing unhealthy foods. In the last five years, food and beverage marketing to children and adolescents has undergone a profound transformation. Fast-food, processed-food and beverage companies increasingly rely on digital tools and techniques to target young people through social media, mobile phones, gaming, and immersive websites--basing their communications on personal information and tailoring it to geographic, racial, ethnic and sociodemographic subgroups, including those at greatest risk for childhood obesity. These online marketing practices are often invisible to parents and raise serious privacy concerns. The growing arsenal of digital marketing techniques used to promote foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt will likely exacerbate the childhood obesity epidemic. Building on its successful leadership in defining and promulgating feasible privacy safeguards for online marketing to youths, CDD--in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Food Marketing Work Group (FMWG), National Policy and Legal Analysis Network (NPLAN) and the Foundation's Childhood Obesity team's forthcoming advocacy center--will engage potential allies and stakeholders to capitalize on this window of opportunity for change, mainly provided by adoption of the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, a policy to guide deliberations between industry and nongovernmental organizations. CDD will not use RWJF funds for lobbying.

Grant Details

Amount Awarded $280,000.00

Awarded on: 8/13/2012

Time frame: 8/15/2012 - 8/14/2013

Grant Number: 70256