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Depending on where you read about it, the new Federal Trade Commission report released earlier this week detailing that $1.6 billion is spent marketing food and bevs to children is either confusing or downright creepy.
A few incomplete highlights: Nearly $500 million is spent marketing soda to kids between the ages of 2 and 11. (Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse? Or do locusts definitely have to be involved?) And just under $300 million is spent advertising fast food restaurants to kids in the same age range.
But the good news is, the American Beverage Association has asked its members companies to lay off, and a bunch of big corporations, via The Council of Better Business Bureaus, have also agreed to either advertise healthier products to kids or stop kid-oriented advertising altogether.
For more insight into the report, check out Lisa Guernsey’s post about it over at her blog, Media Minds. Guernsey’s the author of Into the Mind of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five, and the thoughtful questions she raises will give you yet another reason to a) either buy a TiVo or DVR and use it religiously, or b) teach your kids like, right now, about media literacy.
Filed under Spit Take
Frank Baker said,
July 31, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
I must respectfully disagree. Like the tobacco companies, the food industry will find new and innovative ways of getting their junk food messages in front of unsuspecting and media ILLITERATE parents and kids.
Smart Television Alliance said,
August 3, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
Oh, absolutely. This all sounds good on paper, but it really does give corporations the opportunity to get sneakier.
Read about “Media Literacy for the Unconscious Mind” at http://www.ibiblio.org/nmediac/winter2002/mind.html. You’ll never look at a shopping mall, much less a TV ad, the same way again.