ABSTRACT
Advertising has moved on from predetermined slots in commercial broadcasts and into incorporated digital spaces-influencer posts, branded vlogs, advergames, social content driven by algorithms-fusing commercial persuasion with entertainment by having erased boundaries and markers that indicated the signal of commercial breaks. That this shift is aligned with a developmental issue-the ability to identify the persuasive commercial intent behind and above the mere identification of advertisements, as a skill acquired with age during childhood and therefore not robust before the early adolescent age-matters to the law because the present consumer-protection framework in India, along with in several other jurisdictions, continues to take a purely disclosure-based stance where labels such as “Ad” or “Sponsored” depend for their effectiveness on the presence of a mature adult-level reasonable consumer capable of acting upon such disclosures. Itinquiries into how disclosure serves as a suitable device for child consumer protection given these embedded digital advertising characteristics among child consumers.
By employing doctrinal, comparative and normative methods, the article dissects the existing consumer-protection law framework in India-such as the Indian Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the 2022 CCPA Guidelines, FSSAI regulations, ASCI codes-and compares it to existing models operating in the UK, USA and the EU, using the field of child-targeted food advertising as a prime case. This analysis reveals that not only is there no reliable uptake of disclosures as a means to child comprehension of persuasive intent but even there, in the presence of it, disclosure alone doesn’t reduce persuasive pull, especially among young child consumers and among child consumers who share a parasocial relationship with the discloser.
These observations stand vindicated in parallel and independent routes explored across other comparative jurisdictions- audience-relative recalibration of disclosures in the UK, supplemental provisions structure around disclosure in the EU, and clear admission of the inadequacies of disclosure in the USA. Finally, it concludes that despite the intent, the Indian 2022 guidelines establish a disclosure-based model unsuitable for children. Therefore, it recommends child-centric disclosures, particular protection of younger children and for child consumers with parasocial links, structural limits imposed upon embedded commercial content, particular rules for child-targeted food advertising sector, reformative use of self-regulation and supplementation of disclosure-based methods in creating and strengthening the layered system of child-consumer protection in India.