ARACY Lead, Advocacy.
Australian children deserve better than an advertising landscape designed to hook them on harmful products — and Give Us an Ad Break is calling for change.
On free-to-air television alone, children are likely to see 800 junk food ads in a single year. Gambling ads were broadcast at a rate of 374 per day — two-thirds of them during daylight hours. Online, children aged 8–13 encounter around 13 junk food ads on a typical day, and young people stumble across an alcohol ad every two minutes and 43 seconds while scrolling social media.
The impact on children is clear. Three-quarters of 8–16-year-olds can name at least one gambling brand, and the same proportion believe gambling is simply a normal part of sport. Each additional type of gambling ad a young person is exposed to increases their odds of problem gambling by 10%. Outdoor advertising near schools pushes unhealthy food at 31 times the rate of healthy options. Four in five Australians want less advertising for these products.
Australia continues to rely on voluntary industry codes to protect children from this exposure. Give Us an Ad Break says that’s not good enough — and the evidence backs them up.
What young people are telling us
Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. The world around them shapes who they become. The ads they see, the food they can access, the messages they absorb — all of it matters. That’s not a theory. It’s what young people across Australia have told us, in their own words.
ARACY’s Young and Wise report brings together insights from over 117 consultations with children and young people across Australia over the past five years, capturing more than 10,000 voices. What came back was clear: the environments we build around young people matter more than we often admit.
Our Young and Wise Series 1 Roundtables dug deeper into specific issues. In our Alcohol and Other Drugs Roundtable, young people described a world already saturated with harmful advertising. They reported seeing alcohol ads mostly online — on TikTok and YouTube — as well as on billboards and public transport.
One participant put it plainly:
“I guess when you think about it, you do tend to see more advertisements for alcohol, especially if you go out and stuff like that, which I think it’s just like billboards and you know that sort of stuff. It’s very common.”
— Young and Wise Alcohol and Other Drugs Roundtable participant, aged 17–19
The same young people told us that government messaging about alcohol is often perceived as generic, overly focused on statistics, and ultimately ineffective. Meanwhile, ads that promote alcohol keep coming — and sticking.
In our Nutrition Roundtable, young people told us healthy food is too often unaffordable or inaccessible. They asked for support, not shame. Across both roundtables, the pattern was the same: industries that profit from harmful products have a louder voice in young people’s lives than the supports designed to help them
Young people are calling for better mental health support to reduce harmful self-medication, youth-friendly prevention and education messaging, and confidential and accessible services that feel safe to reach out to. These aren’t radical asks. They’re the basics.
A broken system
Right now, those basics are being drowned out. Gambling. Alcohol. Junk food. Three industries, one thing in common — they all profit from targeting children. The industries behind these products largely write their own rules about where, when and how they can advertise. That’s a broken system.
That’s why ARACY has signed on to the Give Us an Ad Break campaign. It calls on the Federal Government to introduce a Harmful Products Marketing Act — clear, enforceable rules about when and where harmful products can be marketed, especially near children.
This isn’t radical. We’ve done it before. VicHealth itself was established by the Parliament of Victoria as part of the Tobacco Act 1987. Legislation changed culture. It can again.
The policy framework is clear
This campaign also directly supports the work we do alongside VicHealth and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute through the Future Healthy Countdown 2030. Published annually in the Medical Journal of Australia, the Countdown brings together the best available evidence and policy priorities to track progress on children and young people’s health and wellbeing across seven interconnected domains. Among its eight evidence-based policy actions, Action 6 is unambiguous: establish legislation and regulation to protect children and young people under 18 from the marketing of unhealthy and harmful products. Give Us an Ad Break is exactly that kind of action.
Young people told us what they need. They were clear, honest and practical. The least we can do is build a system that listens.
Join us
Over 130 organisations have already signed on. We’re asking you to join us.
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With six connected areas, The Nest ensures young Australians have everything they need for the best start in life, helping them reach their highest potential.
Using The Nest, has helped ARACY to be at the forefront of disease prevention and the promotion of holistic health for young Australians.
Here you’ll see some examples of how The Nest has been used in organisations outside of ARACY across Australia.
