Comments (8)

By Mom Unplugged, December 8, 2007 11:28 pm

I still remember growing up and seeing TV ads with Barbie looking gorgeous and twirling around by herself and thinking that if I had that particular Barbie, she would dance around like that and be like a best friend to me instead of a plastic doll, and my life would be perfect. Well, Santa did occasionally bless me with that wonderously miraculous gift of the moment, but the wonderous gift never did what it seemed to in the ads, and it never changed my life.

How do we explain to kids that what is in the ads they see, is not what would come in the package under the tree? The easiest way is to have no TV, so they see no ads.

Barring that more radical approach, the book Unplug the Christmas Machinehas some good suggestions for how to teach your kids about TV commercials:

According to this book, studies have shown that children under the age of 5 cannot distinguish TV commercials from actual programs. (Thanks for the link Dana!)

The authors suggest that parents watch at least one hour of TV with children, in order to discuss commercials.

+ Have young children call out “commercial” whenever an ad appears.
+ Talk to children (especially older children) about what is being advertised and how the product is made to seem appealing.
+ Have older kids count the number of commercials in one hour, or even have them time the length of each commercial.

Here are some ideas that grabbed me from the website PBS Parents: Children and Media:

+ For Grade Schoolers:

“When watching TV with your child, question the commercials.Voice your skepticism by posing questions such as these: Who do you think created this ad? What do you think the message is? What might the advertiser not be telling us? Do you think you can believe what you see? Start with obvious targets—ads promoting high-fat foods, for example—then move on to more subtle ads, such as those promoting a cool or attractive lifestyle. Explain how advertisements are often meant to make people feel that something is missing from their lives. “

+ For Pre-Teens:

Try muting an ad and have your child tell you what he or she thinks the ad is saying. Or…have your child close their eyes and tell you what he or she thinks it is showing.

There are so many more wonderful ideas grouped by age at PBS Parents: Children and Media, that I shall just have to link to them by age here:

Preschoolers
Grade Schoolers
Pre-Teens
Teens

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Quote of the Day:

“Adolescents, youths, and even children, are easy victims of the corruption of love. Deceived by unscrupulous adults, who, lying to themselves and to them, draw them into the dead-end streets of consumerism.”

- Pope Benedict XVI, quoted today while talking about Christmas (heard on tonight’s NPR All Things Considered)

Sorry this is so “heavy.” I am not Catholic, nor do I usually get into religion on my blog, but I did think this was a quote worth thinking about, no matter what one’s beliefs.

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Read all the Christmas/Holidays Unplugged posts here.

Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2007 11:00 am

This is old news now (about one week old) but I MUST blog about it. A study by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine has found that children ages 3 to 5 tend to prefer the taste of food that comes in a McDonald’s wrapper over identical food which does not.

Dr. Robinson’s research team gave 63 children, ages 3 to 5, the following foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries (all from McDonald’s) as well as baby carrots and milk (from the grocery store). Each child received two portions of each food. One portion was wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or bag, the other was in a plain wrapper. The children overwhelmingly preferred the food in the McDonald’s wrapper over the identical food in the plain wrapper.

Dr. Robinson says:

“Kids don’t just ask for food from McDonald’s, they actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald’s tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.”

Other interesting (and frightening) findings of the study are the following facts about the children:

- One third of the children ate at McDonald’s more than once a week.

- More than three-quarters had McDonald’s toys at home

- They had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes

- More than one-half the children had a TV in their rooms! (Wow! These kids are only 3 to 5 years-old!!!)

Discussing his findings, which seem to link TV-viewing with a preference for McDonald’s, Dr. Robinson said:

“We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald’s more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper. This is a company that knows what they’re doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children.”

This frightening placebo effect of food preference in children seems to me to be yet another argument in favor of placing some sort of limit on food marketing to kids. If you want to read a bit more about about recent efforts to put limits on food ads targeted to kids, please read my June 25th post Food Marketing to Kids.

So, in case anyone still had a doubt, kids as young as ages 3 to 5 can be successfully “branded” by large corporations spending billions on TV advertising targeted at young viewers.

OK. On a lighter note, I think I’d better stock up on McDonald’s wrappers for a proper presentation of my A-list brussels sprouts to my children. “Hey kids, did you know McDonald’s now serves brussels sprouts? Yum!!!!!”

The study: Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences appearing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medecine, Vol. 161 No. 8, August 2007

(You can read an article about the study at the Washington Post online: Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say.)

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer spress for the “Good Food” photo.

Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, June 25, 2007 10:46 am

Another good reason to unplug your kids is to reduce the amount of marketing that they are exposed to. One more interesting story on NPR this morning (in addition to the children’s book recommendations that I posted about here) is entitled: Child Obesity Concerns Prompt Shift in Food Ads.

The story quoted some frightening statistics: 2 to 7 year-olds see an average of 12 food ads per day (approximately 4,400 ads per year) and 8 to 12 year-olds see an average of 21 food ads per day (approximately 7,600 per year). Of course most of these ads promote candy, junky snacks, fast food, soda, and sugary cereals. (Kaiser Family Foundation study: Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States).

Much research has been done that establishes a link between childhood obesity and TV watching. The current thinking on this, is that it is not just the passive, sedentary nature of TV watching that contributes to obesity, but also the fact that the TV encourages children to want to consume the types of food that they see in the ads.

I am sure that this logic is debateable, however I would think that there would be very few parents who would object to a reduction in the marketing of unhealthy foods to their children, regardless of the reasoning behind that.

There is currently no legislation governing the marketing of food to children. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a consumer advocacy group that is trying to convince food companies to stop marketing junk food to first graders. Apparently the FTC is also pressuring the major food manufacturers to limit their marketing of unhealthy food to kids.

Last fall, eleven food companies (including Kraft, Kellogg’s, Coke, and General Mills) agreed to voluntarily limit the marketing money they spend on unhealthy ads and use more of that money to promote healthier foods. I do not know if there is any proposed timetable for the change, and having no TV I can’t say if there is a noticeable change in the types of food ads kids see (cynical me suspects not).

The food companies are worried that if they don’t set some voluntary guidelines for themselves, there will certainly be legislative, or even court action. Such non-voluntary restrictions might be stricter than limits the companies could set voluntarily now.

Stay tuned. I imagine that we shall be hearing more about this in the coming months. In the meantime, consider ad-avoidance another HUGE benefit of unplugging your kids!

To hear this interesting story in full, click here.

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com and photographer ppdigital.