There’s More to Brazil Than Soccer

Brazil isn’t only one of the favorites to win the 2026 World Cup, and it isn’t just a place of beautiful culture and places. It’s also ahead of most of the world in how it deals with evidence of harms from different industries. 

Here are our top five examples of how Brazil addresses commercial misbehavior:

While Australia, the UK, and at least eight other countries passed age restrictions on who is allowed to use social media, Brazil is forging its own path with laws to make social media safer instead. Critics of the “social media bans,” argue that the policies punish the wrong players. Banning kids from social media puts them in the regulatory cross-fires, while potentially only delaying their access to unsafe and addictive platforms. And whether the delay happens at all is now a major question. Recent research finds that 85% of Australian teenagers still access social media a year after the ban went into effect. Brazil’s approach is more promising. Put into effect last Tuesday on June 23, Brazil’s new law requires effective age verification, links children’s accounts to their adult guardians, and bans platforms from activating addictive features like infinite scroll and automatic play. While the efficacy of the law will be tested with time and evaluation data, its design shifts the burden of change to the right culprit: social media platform designers.

In 2023, the Brazilian government issued guidelines for healthy food environments in schools that set standards for things like food marketing and the quality of food available in both public and private schools. And in 2025, Ceará became the first state to completely ban the provision, sale and marketing of ultraprocessed foods in schools. Hospitals in Brazil are also doing their part to protect communities by working to eliminate ultra-processed food completely over the upcoming years and replace it with locally sourced, whole foods. 

In 2006, in an effort to clean up the urban landscape and restore the area’s historical and cultural heritage, the city of São Paulo passed the Clean City Law. The city was ahead of the game 20 years ago, and remains ahead of it. The law acted as a comprehensive ban on commercial advertisements on both public and private property and resulted in the the dismantling of over 15,000 billboards and an additional 300,000 business signs across the city. The effect? A cleaner looking city with more room to celebrate art and old buildings as well as freed up brain space for residents.