“Tell people if a video has an ad or not:” sixth graders’ views on improving YouTube following an advertising literacy program

On YouTube, young people encounter overt and covertly embedded forms of advertising. Advertising literacy education can help young social media users critically approach covert advertising and the algorithmically driven processes that use data from their online activity to target them with tailored ads. In the current study, qualitative data in the form of letters and posters produced by 43 sixth-grade students in the U.S. who participated in an in-school advertising literacy program are analyzed as a means of understanding their views on the ethics of advertising on YouTube. Concerns about data collection and privacy are among the themes that emerged in the data. The data also reveal widespread acceptance of the inevitability of ads accompanied by a desire to have those ads be relevant to users’ interests.