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BACKGROUND One promising approach to influence nutrition behavior is to limit food and beverage marketing to children. Children are a lucrative market and schools may be an effective setting in which to intervene. Studies have shown that marketing in schools is prevalent but little is known about digital marketing (DM) to students in the school setting. METHODS We used an online survey to assess DM environments in a national sample of middle schools. RESULTS Our findings demonstrate that students are exposed to marketing through school devices. Gaps in school district, school and classroom policy and practice lead to student exposure to food and beverage marketing. CONCLUSIONS Our data point to actionable policy and practice change at the school district, individual school, and classroom levels that could help limit unwanted and harmful food and beverage marketing to youth.

A school-focused commercializing process over 100 years in the making has been turbo-charged by the rise of data-collecting digital educational platforms and a pandemic that has forced widespread use of distance learning. Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger explain how advertising to students creates what John Dewey would call “mis-educative experiences.” They describe how private companies have made inroads into public schools by offering funding and free resources, while using their interactions with schools as an opportunity both to directly market to students and to collect data on them that can be used for future marketing or other unknown purposes.

The Along digital SEL product marketed to teachers by Gradient Learning and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) promises to help teachers establish strong relationships with their students via an exchange of personal reflections. In so doing, it collects intimate personal information from students about their lives. Faith Boninger and Alex Molnar explain how the legal documents that govern Gradient’s retention and use of students’ data allow Gradient to retain students’ de-identified data in perpetuity and use it for unknown purposes. They explain the privacy and other threats associated with de-identified data, and warn against allowing education technology providers — particularly Gradient and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — unfettered use of it.