Youth washing as a corporate social responsibility tactic of health-harming industries

The marketing tactics of health-harming industries are broader than advertising. Health-harming industries use a range of promotional and public relations strategies to increase corporate branding, promote their products, and shape their image as socially responsible corporate citizens. Increasingly, this has included ‘washing’ strategies which companies use to enhance their legitimacy and deflect blame. There is growing research examining the use of youth-focused engagement in CSR strategies; however, there have been few attempts to document the range of ‘youth washing’ strategies that may be used by health-harming industries. This perspective piece explores some of the strategies that are used across a variety of health-harming industries, including the alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food, tobacco, and fossil fuel industries, to align with youth activities and causes. We propose a definition of ‘youth washing’ and present some examples of youth washing strategies across five domains—youth education programs; youth employment and training programs; sports activities; youth events; and youth-focused philanthropy. Using this information, we constructed a proposed typology of strategies that will help guide future research and policy considerations of a range of public relations strategies that health-harming industries may use to align their business practices with youth. Academic and policy responses should apply youth-centred approaches to critically examine and counter such practices.