Top Social Media Companies Made Nearly $11B from Ads for Minors
'Our finding that social media platforms generate substantial advertising revenue from youth highlights the need for greater data transparency as well as public health interventions and government regulations...'
Posted by
Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
December 31, 2023
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(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) It was revealed in a Dec. 27, 2023, study by Harvard University that major social media companies collectively made nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue from American minors in 2022.

To estimate the amount of money that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube generated off of advertisements targeted toward minors on the platforms in the U.S., researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed market data and used public surveys and found out that around $2.1 billion of the revenue was generated by kids under the age of 12, while $8.6 billion was generated from users between the ages of 13 and 17.

“Our finding that social media platforms generate substantial advertising revenue from youth highlights the need for greater data transparency as well as public health interventions and government regulations,” Amanda Raffoul, lead author of the study and instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, wrote.

It was also discovered that, in 2022, YouTube had the highest quantity of underage U.S. users at 49.7 million, followed by TikTok and Snapchat at 18.9 million and 18 million, respectively.