children's life's choices? absolutely. tonight... who's watching the kids? i love social media. i've had a digital life since i was about 13. facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok. now, these days i almost feel my digital life is indistinguishable from my real one. i mean, if i didn't instagram it, did it even really happen? i know that advertising is a part of this, and recently i noticed the return of some old anxieties, alongside a high number of diet—related ads. it made me ask, just how much do social media companies really know about me, and what impact is this having on children growing up today? i've come to holyrood secondary, scotland's biggest high school, to ask these 11; and 15—year—olds — are they on their social media accounts as much as me? i could spend, like, five hours on tiktok and maybe on weekends, like, 10, 11 hours. a good few hours a day on instagram. because you just get so, like, distracted by it that everything else is like...doesn�*t exist for a moment. i showed them my instagram feed. did anything jump out at you? yeah. i think about 60% of what was there was either an ad or, like, a promotion for something. is it really sort of obvious to you? yeah. is itjust normal to you, or does it annoy you? what are the feelings there? it feels normal. yeah... yeah, it's just normal. you just sort of get used to it. - so, do you all have your phones on you? yeah. i want to do an experiment to see if they realise how social media companies are using their personal data to target content at them. do all of you have the tiktok app? yeah. when you look on tiktok and you think about the type of content you tend to see there, do you have any guesses on, when you open your app, what might pop up? for me it's probably anime's going to pop up. anime? mm—hm. normally the first thing to - come up is an advert on mine. advert? yeah, it's an advert. oh, yeah, adverts. it's always an advert. 0k. so what do the students find when they all check their phones, at the same time, in the same place? it's boxing... someone boxing. painting. anything else? it's a sponsored funko pop... right. ..that someone�*s promoting. all these tiktok users are the same age, go to the same school, live in the same city, but they're getting very different targeted content. and how does that make you feel, that they're making a lot of money, essentially, from your information? your private information. i've never actually - bothered about that, nah. no, i've never really thought into it. their reactions don't really surprise me, but what's actually going on when they open their phones? what they see in their own feed is determined by lines of code called algorithms. the algorithms literally learn from what we like and what we scroll through, what we watch and how long we watch it. tiktok wasn't a thing when i was 13, but today it's one of the most popular apps amongst teenagers. i want to know what today's teens see when theyjoin up. i'm going to call myself 13, which is the youngest age you can officiallyjoin, though many social media users are much younger than that. i've got a fresh device, so the algorithm can't pick up any data trail. and i'm going to start scrolling. within minutes the algorithm has picked up that i'm in scotland, and then glasgow. as a 13—year—old, i'm presented with this pop—up saying that my account is private. it doesn't change what i see, but it limits who can see any videos i post. and then another pop—up. this one nudges the 13—year—old user to help tiktok make money by keeping personalised ads switched on. last year tiktok�*s parent company made £25 billion. this lawyer says the whole point of keeping people online longer is it allows platforms like tiktok to harvest increasing amounts of data. the more you use tiktok, the more it learns about you. the more you interact with the program, the more data it is able to collect. so the algorithms are able to more specifically target you based upon what it is you're watching, what you like, what you didn't like. the wall streetjournal investigated this. they created automated accounts, posing as teenagers. when they searched for explicit content, they were fed more and more of it. tiktok said this experiment in no way represented the behaviour or viewing habits of a real person. there are several pending legal cases being brought here and in the us about the collection of children's data. david scott is leading one against tiktok. whenever you interact with the app, what happens is it gets your email address, it gets your telephone number, it gets your profile picture. it keeps track of every video you have ever...or photo you have ever uploaded, any video or photo you've ever watched, any video or photo you've liked. it goes onto your computer, it determines your ip address, it looks at the cookies that you have, it determines the device you're using. so in many ways it's very, very insidious, because as soon as you interact with the app, it's grabbing all of this information. tiktok said... they said they had created a... ..of their privacy policy for younger users. the content we access on social media is only free because of advertising. our personal data is worth a fortune. last year, alphabet, the parent company of google and youtube, generated over £100 billion in revenue from online adverts, and it's practically facebook�*s whole business model. none of the companies we approached that sell this online advertising wanted to speak to us. but we did find this industry podcast, where they discuss between themselves just how valuable the children's market the core business model of the googles, of the facebooks, for all that they do, and for all the innovation that they bring, ultimately, they are ad companies. so they are hugely invested in keeping this model alive. is there a reason why they would actually be specifically interested in a child's perspective of the world, or children's data? by the time the average child is 13, the ad tech industry has collected 72 million data points about that child. and then this data is just used to kind of build profiles of our children, with their interests, so that advertisers can basically pay for their attention. children browsing social media platforms can see over 400 adverts an hour. so, they are absolutely being, you know, bombarded with an effort to kind of either get them to consume more, to get them to kind of change their opinion, and this, you know, a huge volume of adverts, much more than we would, again, permit on any other media. you know, i don't think i really care about what information i put out online and i don't think my friends do either, but i am getting curious to find out what data is actually being held on me. facebook�*s the first social media platform that ijoined. i know that you can download the data held on you there and i'm giving ita try. ijoined at 13, this could take some time. so, everything's downloaded. ijust need to open it now. i am a little bit nervous, i'm not going to lie. erm... there are dozens of folders, including one called "off facebook activity", listing the date and time i visited over 500 websites, but that's not what's scaring me here. it says messages. no way! they've got messages stored here from when i was... i must have been 13, 14. oh, my god. they have everything, absolutely everything i have ever sent. videos, photos. they have...a picture of me that i sent to a friend at 16 in my underwear. i'm actually shaking a bit right now. i can't actually believe that they're storing that. when i sent this picture, i had no idea that this would still be in existence. we asked facebook about this. they said... ..and new settings allowed people to delete their messages automatically. they no longer allow advertisers to target under—18s using data from external apps and websites, orfrom their interests. i'm here with poppy... some of the best people to carry marketing messages to children are children. they are called kidfluencers. they produce content that can reach billions. like this video from ten—year—old ryan from texas. this has been watched more than two billion times. youtuber tiana from nottingham was treated like a pop star when she met fans of her toy review channel at a shopping centre, aged just ten. kidfluencers make money in a couple of ways. first, the traditional way. companies pay them to promote their products. it's only £7.99. but when kidfluencers have built a large following, there's a second, more lucrative, way to make money from ads. when they upload video, they decide how many advertising spots they want to sell around it. companies bid against each otherfor the space, based on users' personal data. imagine a billboard where everyone sees a different personalised ad. this website shows how much they can earn. if i take the most popular video from teenage youtuber tiana, and put it into the calculator... ..these are her estimated earnings. not yet in tiana's league is 16—year old nicholas, a tiktok creator from edinburgh. ..on a rock in space. nothing even matters... emily laughs. is there an alternate universe within everything... that's just what's going through your mind all the time. yeah. how did you get started with it? i started off by doing dances. i'd seen all the famous tiktokers doing it, and that's what i had set my mind on, "i really want to become famous, i really want to become like them." nicholas now has more than 760,000 followers. in brand marketing terms, that makes him a "macro influencer". and with a following like that, i guess you might have been approached by advertisers? yeah, yeah, i have been. i've been... i haven't actually done that many brand deals, but, yeah, i've done a few, so, yeah... sometimes it's been for virtual things such as apps and games, and then other times it's been for physical objects. for example, i got... there's this company which are sending me these lamps that i have got to promote. and they basicallyjust told me to make a video with the lamps and then tag them in the caption, so they really just gave me, like, freedom to do whatever i want, just show the lamps. so, when it comes to online advertising, there are a set of rules. do you know what they are? do you make sure to follow them? how does that work? erm, i'm not that certain about what they are, and normally when i do do advertising, i make it quite clear that the company sent it to me by tagging them, and, like, saying that it's an ad in the caption. but for some videos where i'm promoting games, for example, i never say that that's an advert and i never say it's been paid for, because ijust see it as one of my normal videos, so i don't really see it as an advertisement, even though i'm getting paid for it, if that makes sense. he has 69 million likes and counting. and although he tries, can we blame him if he doesn't know exactly what rules he should be following? it's a complex area. there are at least three different regulatory agents in the uk that govern this sort of content. but the content goes global, so there's all the other countries' rules to consider. i can totally understand how a teenage creator would struggle to get clarity. it is understandable a child is going to struggle with differentiating it is understandable a child is going to struggle with differentiating between it is understandable a child is going to struggle with differentiating between an advert and something different but it is also true to say that something can still be difficult for teenagers and for adults as well, it can often be really difficult to work out what is what. i want to test this out. i'm meeting primary schoolchildren from a village outside inverness. i want to show them a couple of pieces of content to see how much they understand. the first one is a traditional tv advert. what will the seven—year—olds make of this? it was all a bit like honey and bees and, like, they were like talking about new foods and stuff. i don't know if that food looks yummy, it kind of made me hungrier. as predicted, the younger ones had trouble identifying this as an advert. the older ones were more adept. rory is 12. erm...the cereal advert i think was more aimed... ..aimed at the younger people, because then they would ask the parents to buy the cereal. what about something from the youtube channel of a fast food company? this is an ad and labelled as such. it went out last christmas. we understand what this is, but will they? do you want to tell me a little bit about...what did you just watch? like, the other person was mostly on screens, not paying attention to the bits of nature and other stuff about christmas. and, erm... and then at the end, he actually thought about it. it was just about him not liking to do anything. 0k. there was this bag on there and then at the end, - it said — it had the big m, the logo for mcdonald's. i it's clear the older children recognise the brand, while the younger ones struggle to understand what they were watching. many social media companies say their platforms are designed for people over 13, yet this doesn't stop millions of younger kids. ofcom found 55% of 5— to15—year—olds use social media, so it's no surprise that several of these primary—aged children have also been on these platforms. i use snapchat sometimes, and instagram. well, i sometimes watch youtube, netflix, and, yeah... i — when i'm watching the telly, i normally watch youtube or netflix, or sometimes disney+. all the children recognise top british kidfluencer tiana, who makes a living from her youtube channel. she makes clear when she is promoting lego to her 17 million subscribers. did most of you — even if you don't necessarily watch her, did most of you know who she was? yeah. over the last decade, children's use of digital media has increased rapidly. nearly six in ten children are on youtube an average of 2.5 hours a day. dr hanson is concerned about the impact this might have on children in the future. there's a feeling of being sucked in, of dependency, of needing — needing my smartphone, needing all that's on there, finding it very difficult to put that down and put it away. and, so, for me, one of the biggest problems here is what that does to young people's autonomy. in that respect, then, in a way is big tech and ad tech — are they kind of influencing children's life choices? absolutely. what we know from research is that if people come to hold more materialistic values, actually that is linked to them feeling less happy in their lives, lower levels of well—being, and also, actually, a reduction in how much they value other things like kindness, generosity. according to ofcom, more than half of parents in scotland worry about companies collecting information on what their children do online, and almost as many worry about online pressure to spend money. did anything in particular strike you? i do think that online advertising can be quite subtle. also i think there's an element of them being influenced by what they watch, even if they're not aware that they are being advertised to. i suppose i've tried to explain to the girls that not everything is as it seems on the internet, and what i've seen today, what i've learnt today, ithink i maybe need to pay that even more attention. and were you aware that by the time a child turns 13 years old, 72 million data points have been collected on them? no, and that's shocking. i just don't think that children should be in that category. i don't think it should be allowed. you know, if i sign up for something, i agree to the terms and conditions, and that is fair enough. even if i don't read them thoroughly, i'm signing up to them. whereas children aren't doing that. they're not able to make those kinds of decisions. to be perfectly honest, i don't tend to read, let alone understand, the terms and conditions. but recently, some new rules have come in that are meant to restrict the collection of children's data. these rules are called the age appropriate design code and have been brought in by the uk's data regulator, the information commissioner's office. we assessed that the sort of areas where there is the biggest risk, particularly for children, is in social media messaging, in online video and music and in online games, because these are the areas where children are spending a lot of time and effort. a lot of their data is being collected through these, and potentially, in some cases, it's being misused. the code stops companies sharing data without a compelling reason and makes them take account of the best interests of the child. so, if firms know they are dealing with an under—18, they now aren't allowed to share things automatically, like location or browsing history, unless these conditions are met. one of the sort of single most important principles within the children's code is to act within the best interests of the child. you see, when it's working well, children are in control, have autonomy and have choice. when it isn't working well, when they may be exposed to harm, is when those platforms have taken away that and are manipulating children to have behaviours that are great for the platform but may not be best for the child. social media platforms say they are changing the way they operate. facebook, instagram, and youtube have now restricted the number of targeted ads to under—18s. tiktok still allows these, if the user has agreed. we asked the big platforms if this new rule meant that they had stopped collecting data on under—18s too. tiktok and youtube are still collecting data on this age group, though youtube says it will reduce the amount it is collecting. we didn't get a clear answerfrom facebook, which owns instagram. what's clear is the new code doesn't stop companies collecting personal data on under—18s. ad tech and big tech sometimes know more about a young person than their parents do, and that can be in ways that might get them in trouble with their parents. heather burns is a digital rights activist. she says uk data protection laws didn't need strengthening, they just need better enforcement. there are laws and legal frameworks in place. the question is, are they accessible to people? are companies obeying them, working within the law? we need companies to be more conscientious of the fact that children are using their products and services, and they need to find a way to help protect those children without actually violating their privacy and their right to freedom of expression even more. but the biggest difference i think we could make is in terms of advertising and ad tech, and the networks of advertisers that are collecting and utilising and monetising data about us and everything we do in every waking minute. i want to put this to the regulator who oversees the children's code. do you think that the younger generation might be disappointed to learn about how much of their data has been collected and used ? i mean, i think this is the question around our impact, because of course the single most powerful change for organisations is their reputation. and there are organisations who have always done the right thing, and they've built a level of trust with children and parents that will last a lifetime. those that don't, they're going to end up, as people become aware of what they've been doing, those people will turn against those organisations. they won't use their services as they become adults. they won't purchase them for their companies. i have a feeling in some ways that ad tech is sometimes too powerful for regulators. are they more in charge of you than you are of them? so — i mean, ithink enforcement is not the only tool in our toolkit for drive change. there are platforms who don't adapt as the code comes into place or others, once we've tried education, once we helped them through it, if they still aren't doing the right thing, we're not hesitant to take robust action to make sure they are protected. and we have the powers to hold even the largest organisations to account. since i started making this programme, the big tech companies have made some positive changes to protect the privacy of children and young people on social media. but they don't deny they are still collecting personal data on them. i didn't really understand what i was signing up to when ijoined facebook at 13. but today the law gives me the right to delete my data, so i'm finally getting rid of that very personal teenage picture. i don't know if the children and teenagers that i spoke to will also wonder what data is being held on them one day. but what i can say is that i've learned to care a lot more, and i will be treading through social media more carefully in the future. hello. plenty of cloud across the uk yesterday and plenty of it still around today as well. glimmers of sunshine or sunny spells at best, i think, sums up our forecast for the majority. for scotland, though, the winds are already picking up. here, we will see cloud bearing more meaningful rain through the day as this cold weather front sinks its way in. high pressure holds things steady for england and wales — just light winds here, that cloud around, as i said. similar story for northern ireland. perhaps a few showers down towards the channel coast. but for scotland, rain will make its way as far south, i think, as the central belt by the time we get to the evening rush hour. some of the rain could be heavy. should be brighter for the northern isles through the afternoon, but it will stay windy. and then the rain progressively works its way into northern ireland and northern england through the evening. and then towards the end of the night, we'll see that rain pushing into the midlands, north wales and parts of east anglia. for the south of the band of rain, temperatures in double figures. behind it, here's a clue of what's to come — temperatures in single figures, much colder air moving in, some pockets of frost to the north first thing friday. and that colder air flushes all the way south through the day on friday, with perhapsjust the exception of the far southwest of england. so friday, much more in the way of sunshine, the day looking a whole lot brighter, but i think you will notice the chillier feel. the southwest of england likely to be warmest. in some areas, temperatures will come down through the day. as the cloud breaks, the weather front pulls away, but the colder air ushers in. top temperatures, well, widely around 13 or 14, perhapsjust eight there in aberdeen. clear skies overnight friday into saturday. we'll see a patchy frost to start saturday, but then i think a decent day for many. particularly in the east, there should be some spells of sunshine. towards the west, cloud trying to encroach, and i think we will see that bearing some rain on the afternoon. temperatures, though, lifting up a little once again as we start to pick up a south—westerly wind, so sitting in the mid—teens. for the mildest and the driest of the two days of the weekend, though, sunday looks to be the better option. we should, i think, see a lot of dry weather on sunday,. it will be milder from the get—go. and when the sun comes out, with the south—westerly wind, i think temperatures a little above average for the time of year — highs of 17 or 18. welcome to bbc news — i'm lewis vaughanjones. our top stories: president biden announces around—the—clock working at two of the biggest ports in the us in a bid to tackle supply chain disruption. five people have been killed in an attack in norway by a man armed with a bow and arrow. star trek�*s william shatner — at the age of 90 — makes history as the oldest person to go into space. what you have given me is the most profound experience ican ever... it's odd, i'm so filled with emotion about whatjust happened.

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