Why do lower-class youths receive more online ads about making easy money?

Young people with fewer financial resources, especially boys, are the most exposed to advertising about how to make easy money. So confirms a pioneering study by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), which has for the first time analysed how the socioeconomic level and gender of young people influences the customized advertising they receive on TikTok and Instagram. Among other data, the study reveals that the percentage of lower-class youths who receive ads about risky financial products (15%) almost doubles that of their upper-class peers (8%).

The research is based on an online survey of 1,200 young people from all over Catalonia aged 14 to 30 that evaluated the contents of advertising videos that appear spontaneously on TikTok and Instagram. On these networks, young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds receive the most ads related to risky financial services (such as quick loans, investing in cryptocurrencies...), betting, online gaming or content promising easy income and flexible jobs with few requirements. In contrast, the only type of advertising that frequently appears for upper-class young people is related to travel and leisure.

Carolina Sáez, study author: “when we look at ads that promise to improve on the social ladder, the differences are hugely accentuated”

The results of the study were recently published in an article in the journal Communication & Society. The main author of the article is Carolina Sáez, a researcher with the Communication, Advertising and Society (CAS) research group of the UPF Department of Communication, who has conducted the research under the supervision of CAS director Mònika Jiménez.  Also collaborating in the study is Isabel Rodríguez de Dios (University of Salamanca).

Researcher Carolina Saéz explains: “when we look at ads that promise to improve on the social ladder, the differences are hugely accentuated”. The study reveals that young people with fewer resources feel they are much more likely than upper-class people to receive ads that promise easy money through digital businesses (44% vs. 4%) or seemingly accessible jobs with no prerequisites (39% vs. 4%). They also state that they are far more likely to receive content encouraging them to make investments for immediate profits, for example through cryptocurrencies (33% vs. 4%). Other promises of quick progress, such as immediate job opportunities or earning money with the mobile phone, reveal equally large differences (27% vs. 3.5%); and the same applies for quick, non-requirement credit listings (21% vs. 3%).

Advertising on social media also reinforces gender stereotypes

The differences in the advertising received according to social class are far more marked among boys than among girls. For example, young, lower-class boys receive twice as many online gambling ads as upper-class boys (22% versus 11%).  Conversely, the percentage of girls who receive such ads shows a much smaller variation between lower class (6.7%) and upper class (5.6%) subjects.

The study found that gender differences in digital advertising are highly pronounced. Girls receive more than twice as many fashion (50% vs. 13%) and beauty ads than boys (71% vs. 28%), and more than three times the amount of advertising dealing with topics related to parenting (16% vs. 5%). However, boys view twice as many ads for sports (54% vs. 26%), online gaming (46% vs. 23%), technology and electronics (32% vs. 15%) and energy drinks (10% vs. 4%); and more than three times as many automotive (16% vs. 6%) or alcohol (10% vs. 4%) adverts.

Why can networks personalize the advertising they deliver to young people according to gender or social class?

Carolina Sáez explains: “While the European data protection framework limits access by digital platforms to personal data, the large volume of information that social networks accumulate from each user allows TikTok and Instagram algorithms to deduce young people’s sensitive data concerning their economic status, educational level, origin or employment status”.

The researcher has found evidence that confirms this deducive capacity of the algorithms. During the study, data from the postal address that the young people provided when filling out the questionnaire anonymously, was crossed with data from the Índex Socioeconòmic Territorial (IST - Small Area Socioeconomic Index) of the Government of Catalonia. The IST gives weighting to different factors (levels of employment, income, education, etc.) to determine the socioeconomic level of the country’s different neighbourhoods, towns and cities. So, “the socioeconomic status of each young person yielded by crossing their address with this official index, largely coincides with the conclusions of the algorithm”, Sáez explains.

Carolina Sáez: “Algorithmic advertising (...) takes advantage of the desire of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to thrive socially”

The researcher warns: “Algorithmic advertising commercially exploits this information and takes advantage of the desire of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to thrive socially”. Minors and young adults are among the most vulnerable to algorithmic advertising, because usually they are not sufficiently mature to deal with it. It should be remembered that on average, young Catalans get their first mobile phone at the age of 12.

Minors also receive advertising for alcohol or gambling

Sáez adds that another “unexpected” result of the research is that minors aged 14-17 have received ads for alcohol, gambling, e-cigarettes or energy drinks through social networks, despite European regulations protecting them from this type of advertising.

For all the above, the study concludes that there is a need to toughen the regulation and control of the use of AI in online advertising targeting young people, as well as their digital literacy to provide them with greater critical capacity as network users.

Reference article:

Sáez-Linero, C., & Jiménez-Morales, M. (2025). Young, lower-class, and algorithmically persuaded: exploring personalized advertising and its impact on social inequality. Communication & Society, 38(2), 63-80. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.38.2.005