Resumen:
This study adopted an exploratory approach to try to establish lines of investigation on the advertising density that children face when using their mobile phones. While connected, minors are exposed to a slightly higher volume of advertising (14 minutes per hour of use) than via other media such as television, with presence of ads during more than 80% of browsing time. Data on exposure of children to advertising through mobile phones with an internet connection were collected and analyzed. The minors were aged 10 to 14 years and lived in Santiago, a metropolitan area in Chile. Children visually interact with and consume advertising content through mobile devices. This eye contact and consumption occur mainly when minors visit game applications, YouTube (app), and histogram (app). Commercial content appeared 23.4% of the time analyzed. Online gaming (23%), food and distribution (18%), entertainment (8%), and fashion (8%) represented the highest percentage of ads. A non-participatory digital observation methodology was applied for data acquisition. Minors were asked to video-record the screen during common activities, thus registering their movements and the content to which they were visually exposed. Forty-five (45) children underwent weekly follow-ups, and an audiovisual database of over 300 recordings was created. Recordings meeting methodological constraints (on, for instance, duration) were subjected to content analysis.
