Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
3.6m kids lie about age on social media
CHILDREN as young as five are setting up social media accounts, with one in 10 kids falsely claiming to be over 18 on them.
More than 3.6million UK accounts on sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok and Youtube are owned by youngsters using fake ages.
Those children were exposed to almost twothirds more age-restricted ads than under-17s using profiles with their actual age, the Advertising Standards Authority found.
ASA director Guy Parker said: “With many children registering on social media with a false age, it’s vital that marketers of agerestricted ads consider their choice of media, use multiple, layered data to target their ads away from young people.”