A study by the , published in the journal , confirms: the personalized algorithms of social networks have a bias and highlight socioeconomic and gender inequalities among adolescents. The study is based on an online survey of 1,200 young people between 14 and 30 years old from all over Catalonia and analyzes how socioeconomic profile and gender determine the advertising that TikTok and Instagram show to their users. Young people with less income receive much more advertising related to risky financial services, gambling and formulas to earn “easy money.” While girls are more vulnerable to fashion and beauty advertising.
Researcher Carolina Sáez, author of the study, emphasizes that, although the European framework limits access to sensitive data, “the large volume of information that social networks accumulate from each user allows the algorithms of TikTok and Instagram. In the study, the advertising videos analyzed were all those that appear spontaneously in the users’ accounts.
The analysis also reveals that minors, between 14 and 17 years old, are receiving advertisements for alcohol, gambling, electronic cigarettes or energy drinks, despite the fact that this type of advertising aimed at adolescents is prohibited.
Financial risks facing fashion and beauty
The socioeconomic bias is especially visible among boys. According to the study, double that among those in the upper class, where the figure drops to 8%. They also consider it much more likely to encounter messages that promise to “earn money easily” through digital businesses or , a difference that in some cases is abysmal: 44% of children with fewer resources claim to see this type of content, compared to just 4% of well-off young people. Something similar occurs with advertising that encourages investing to obtain immediate benefits (33% compared to 4%), with quick job opportunities or income from mobile phones (27% compared to 3.5%) and with quick loans (21% compared to 3%).
In the case of girls, the differences pointed out by the research are concentrated in advertising associated with traditional gender stereotypes (50% compared to 13%) and beauty (71% compared to 28%) than boys, and more than three times as much content related to parenting (16% compared to 5%).
They, on the other hand, are exposed to twice as much advertising for sports (54% vs. 26%), online games (46% vs. 23%), technology and electronics (32% vs. 15%), and energy drinks (10% vs. 4%). They also see more than three times as many automotive (16% vs. 6%) and alcohol (10% vs. 4%) ads.
The pattern is repeated in the: lower class children receive twice as many impacts as those from the upper class (22% compared to 11%). On the other hand, among young people from wealthy families there is only one type of advertising that appears regularly: that linked to travel and leisure. This difference, points out researcher Carolina Sáez, skyrockets when the advertisements “promise improvement on the social scale,” an area where the gap becomes “extraordinary.”
Earlier this year, , based on more than 27,000 interviews, identified a more than 15% increase in online sports betting compared to the previous year. The convenience of carrying a casino in your pocket, available at any time from your mobile phone, is gradually generating a strong dependency, according to specialists. If encouraged by advertising, as the Pompeu Fabra survey identifies, the danger multiplies.
For the UPF, these differences demonstrate that the advertising segmentation of TikTok and Instagram continues to reproduce traditional roles and conditions the type of consumption to which each group is exposed from an early age. The university warns of the need to reinforce the use of artificial intelligence in digital advertising aimed at young people, as well as to promote greater digital literacy so that they can identify risky content.
