According to a study, social media companies might make $11 billion in revenue from users under the age of 18 by 2022

 According to a study, social media companies might make $11 billion in revenue from users under the age of 18 by 2022

According to a study, social media companies might make $11 billion in revenue from users under the age of 18 by 2022

Researchers estimated the number of young people using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube as well as the associated advertising income made by these platforms for the study using data from public surveys and market research conducted in 2021 and 2022.

The researchers developed a simulation model using all of this data to determine how much money these platforms made from young people via advertising.

A recent research conducted in the US claims that social media behemoths like Instagram,

According to the study, between 30 and 40 percent of the money that TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube made from advertising came from young people. It was discovered that Instagram produced almost US$4 billion in ad income among users aged 13 to 17, while YouTube generated the biggest amount of ad revenue among users aged 12 and younger, about US$1 billion in 2022. generated the most money in income. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health led the team's research, which also revealed that TikTok and YouTube would each make US$1.2 billion and US$2 billion in 2022, respectively, from users aged 13 to 17. These results show that significant progress is still being put off. There are "huge financial incentives" for these platforms to stay ahead. Keep kids safe from the risk that comes with using social media.

According to the researchers, these social media behemoths haven't yet self-regulated their behavior to lessen the damage they do to children, despite their claims to be able to do so. Their research has been published in the PLoS ONE publication. Lead author Amanda Raffoul, a pediatrics teacher at Harvard Medical School, stated, "Our findings that social media platforms generate enormous advertising revenue from youth point to the desire for greater data transparency, and additionally, public health interventions and government regulations." gives light."

Researchers estimated the number of young people using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube as well as the associated advertising income made by these platforms for the study using data from public surveys and market research conducted in 2021 and 2022. The study team estimated the number of young people connecting to these sites and the average amount of time spent on them using data from market research, parental control app use, and US Census demographic statistics.

The researchers developed a simulation model using all of this data to determine how much money these platforms made from young people via advertising. They discovered that the combined advertising income from these users on all of these social media platforms was around US$11 billion, US$2.1 billion from users under the age of 12, and US$8.6 billion from users between the ages of 13 and 17. Acquired. The researchers also discovered that, in 2022, YouTube had over 50 million users under the age of 18, compared to roughly 19 million on TikTok, 18 million on Snapchat, 16.7 million on Instagram, roughly 10 million on Facebook, and 7 million on X.

More and more legislators are attempting to enact legislation to stop social media platforms from encouraging depressive, anxious, and disordered eating behaviors in young people as worries about the mental health of adolescents rise.Harvard University professor Brian Austin, a senior author, teaches in the department of social and behavioral sciences. One of the drawbacks of their study, according to the researchers, was having to depend on estimations and forecasts from public surveys and market research sources since social media sites do not reveal user age data or ad income statistics by age group.