Study: Online games frequently advertise unhealthy food to kids; regulation needed


LAWRENCE — Children spending large amounts of time playing games is nothing new, but the Internet has given advertisers unprecedented access to kids playing games online. A study co-authored by a University of Kansas doctoral student shows that advertising in online games is not only common, it is seldom clearly stated to be advertising. Furthermore, when food is advertised in such games, it is often for unhealthy products.

Hannah Kang, doctoral student in the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, co-authored the study with Soontae An of Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. The study was published in the International Journal of Advertising. The authors analyzed 131 popular websites that provide games for children. Games that included advertisements, or what the authors refer to as “advergames,” were prevalent. Twenty-two of the most popular websites, including seven of the top 10 and 12 of the top 25, contained advergames. Most of the sites were purely for gaming, but there were four company sites and two from commercial television studios.

Advertising that targets children has long been a common practice, but the access they are gaining through online games is worth examination, Kang said.

“We’ve found that advergames are a relatively new way of targeting children, but the problem is kids don’t often recognize advertising methods,” she said.

Of the sites that included advergames, nearly half of them contained ads for food, and a total of 180 unique food advergames were located, and many of them were contained on more than one site. Of those, 145 of the games advertised low-nutrient foods that were high in calories, fat, sugar and sodium. In many of the games, branded foods or content packaging were somehow related to the scores or level of achievement. When that was the case, more than 18 percent included foods that were more than 200 calories per serving.

On top of widely occurring advertising for unhealthy foods, few explicitly stated they contained ad content. When they did they often only used one word such as “advertisement” or a sentence such as “this is advertising” or “powered by (product name.”

Kang said she got involved in researching the prevalence of advergames and food ads targeted at children because of her interest in both advertising and health. She hopes to expand on the research by studying if and how exposure to such ads influences children’s decisions.

“The primary purpose is obviously to sell the products, but my concern is it can affect children’s health,” she said. “I think further study could be valuable in measuring the real effects of food product advertising in these games. I’d like to know how much this can affect the food choices they make.”

Kang and An argue that regulation is needed among advertisers who target children through such games, either via self-regulation or legislation.

“As the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative was established in 2006 to encourage more ethical advertising efforts by major food and beverage companies when targeting children, similar voluntary efforts by these gaming sites should be made in the same spirit,” the researchers wrote. “Self-regulatory efforts by gaming sites targeting children seem to be the best solution, as the CFBAI has demonstrated. Besides self-regulatory efforts, regulators should also consider requiring ad breaks in online advergames to be designed for children under 11 because these children are the most vulnerable to advertisements and have difficulty identifying persuasive attempts without a cue.”

Previous research has shown that such regulation is necessary, given the susceptibility of children to advertising, lack of recognition of advertising and the high prevalence of unhealthy products targeted at them.

“Studies on persuasion knowledge predict that, with little or no realization of persuasive attempts, children will be more susceptible to commercial messages,” Kang and An wrote. “As children continue to visit websites to play games, not expecting to encounter advertising messages, they will become more vulnerable to embedded advertising messages in a highly commercialized online game environment. With the lack of cognitive defense against commercial influences, stronger mere exposure effects may occur.”

Thu, 10/02/2014

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Mike Krings

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