Apple’s latest billboard in Italy depicting a toddler with an iPhone has sparked criticism from child rights watchdogs, reigniting debate over the impact of early screen exposure and the company’s marketing ethics.
Apple is facing another burst of criticism over its advertising, this time in Italy, where a billboard shows a toddler clutching an iPhone beneath the slogan, “Everything is ok, it’s iPhone”. According to the Italian rights watchdog the Guarantor Authority for Childhood and Adolescence, the campaign risks sending the wrong message at a time when many countries are debating children’s access to digital devices and the effects of early screen exposure.
Marina Terragni, a member of the authority, said in comments reported by Garatein Fanzia that the advert normalises a pattern in which very young children are handed electronic devices as a form of digital babysitting, which she argued can become the starting point for addiction and may have serious consequences for psychological and cognitive development. Andrea Cangini, director of the Osservatorio Carta, Penna & Digitale at the Luigi Einaudi Foundation, was even more blunt, calling it a “disastrous message” in remarks carried by Orizzonte Scuola and pointing to research that he said links smartphone use with harm to children and teenagers.
The controversy fits a familiar pattern for Apple, which has repeatedly drawn backlash when its marketing has been seen as tone-deaf or misleading. In 2024, the company apologised after an iPad advertisement showing a hydraulic press crushing books and musical instruments was condemned online as a celebration of the “destruction of the human experience”. Earlier, in 2025, Apple pulled an iPhone 16 ad promoting a more personal Siri after acknowledging delays to some of the features being advertised.
Apple has also had trouble with iPhone marketing before. In 2008, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority forced the company to withdraw an advert that suggested the handset offered access to “all parts of the internet”, ruling that the claim was misleading because the device lacked support for technologies such as Flash and Java. In that sense, the latest row is less an isolated misstep than part of a longer history in which Apple’s polished advertising has at times collided with public scrutiny and regulatory pushback.
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