Born to Shop: How Marketers Brainwash Babies
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on December 13, 2007, Printed on December 13, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70488/Santa's shopping is in full swing. Peak season for what I consider child abuse, family abuse and democracy abuse -- marketing to children. I'm of the baby boomer generation. When I was a kid, there was Tony the Tiger hawking Frosted Flakes and little elves selling me cookies, but marketing to children was peanuts -- well, probably Cracker Jacks.
Everything has changed, and changed gradually on such a scale that we are paying an enormous price -- in kids' physical, mental and emotional health, and in the health of our families and our democracy.
From 1992 to 1997, the amount of money spent on marketing to children doubled, from $6.2 to $12.7 billion. Today they are spending over $15 billion. Children influence purchases totaling over $600 billion a year. Children spend almost 40 hours a week outside of school consuming media, most of which is commercially driven. The average child sees about 40,000 commercials each on television alone. 65 percent of children 8-18 have a television in their bedroom.
Earlier this year 11 companies agreed to voluntarily scale back their marketing to children in an effort to slow down the rise in obesity.
Susan Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, weighs in on this effort and what's at stake. Linn is the Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center and a co-founder of the coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. An award winning ventriloquist, Dr. Linn created video based classroom materials Different and the Same: Helping Children Identify and Prevent Prejudice (with the producers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood). In the face of our media-saturated commercialized culture, she encourages make-believe play. She is the author of Consuming Kids.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/70488/