2026-02-11 20:01:19

A report has called for social media advertising to children to be banned.

Children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has found young people have been “bombarded” with ads for weight loss injections and other projects claiming to change their bodies and appearance, despite such commercials being banned.

Rachel – whose report was based on a survery of 2,000 teenagers and two focus groups – said the posts were “immensely damaging” to young people’s self-esteem and called for an ouright ban on social media advertising to children.

Some of the respondents in the survey said they had seen products promoting weight loss, as well as skin-lightening products, and others admitted online beauty content, including that promoting treatments such as lip fillers, was “unavoidable”.

The children’s commissioner said: “Urgent action is needed to create an online world that is truly safer by design.

“We cannot continue to accept an online world that profits from children’s insecurities and constantly tells them they need to change or must be better.”

Dr Peter Macaulay, a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Derby said ending advertising to children on social media was a “necessary step”.

He added: “Alongside restrictions, we need stronger platform accountability, better enforcement of age-appropriate design, and education that helps children understand and critically navigate online pressures.”

The report suggested including amending the Online Safety Act (OSA) to include a “clear duty of care” for social media platforms to stop showing adverts to children and adding changes to Ofcom’s Children’s Code of Practice to “explicitly protect children from body stigma content”.

However, the broadcasting regular stated this is already part of the code under “non-designated content”.

A spokesperson added: “Body stigma content can be incredibly harmful to children, which is why our codes require sites and apps to protect children from encountering it, and to act swiftly when they become aware of it.”

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