Army aiming messages at stressed teens

THE BRITISH Army have been using social media to urge “stressed and vulnerable” teenagers to join up if they fail exams, it was revealed yesterday.

Pupils as young as 16 have been the targets of paid-for Facebook messages.

Campaigners against the recruitment of child soldiers say the Ministry of Defence are abusing their position by zeroing in on young people at a time when they are worried about their future prospects.

Rachel Taylor, the director of programmes at Child Soldiers International, told The Guardian newspaper: “Targeting army advertisements at teenagers when they are stressed and vulnerable is abhorrent.

“These adverts prove once again that the MoD are deliberately targeting children at the lowest limit of the legal recruitment age to fill the lowest qualified, least popular and hardest-to-recruit Army roles.”

It was recently revealed that the Army spent £1.7million on social media content between 2015 and 2017, with the majority of that on Facebook.

Just before results day in 2015, one online post said: “No matter what your results will be, you can still improve yourself in the Army.”

It was accompanied by a photo of quad-biking soldiers on a beach.

Other similar posts featured a young recruit in a military vehicle.

An army spokesperson defended the Facebook messages. He said: “It should be no surprise that, like most major employers, our recruitment campaign applies some focus on individuals leaving school, college and university, as this is when they make career decisions.”