Susan Linn, Ed.D  

A reporter recently asked me and other speakers here today what we see as the most destructive aspect or effect of  marketing to children as practiced in the U.S. today. I don't know how my colleagues answered that question. But I think that the worst thing is that marketing to children succeeds by purposely exploiting their vulnerabilities. In that sense, the  worst impact depends on your child's weaknesses or predilections. Marketing is linked to childhood obesity so if your  child is vulnerable to overeating and poor nutrition habits, than that's the worst.  It's linked to poor body image so if your child  is vulnerable to eating disorders than that's the worst problem. It's linked to violent behavior so if your child is susceptible to violent messages than  that's the worst problem. The same is true for materialism, creativity, family stress and so on. Is obesity worse than bulimia? Is violence worse than preteen sexual precocity?

Children have been targets for some kinds of marketing for a long, long time from carnival barkers hawking freak shows to ads in comic books and the early days of television. But marketing to today's children is so much worse. These days, children are assaulted by marketing at home, in school, on sports fields, in playgrounds and on the street. Children see 40.000 commercials a year on television alone^[iii]. And that doesn't include marketing in schools, on the Internet, cross marketing, product placement, product licensing, viral marketing (or word-of-mouth marketing), marketing on videos, the radio, in movie theaters, on billboards. It doesn't include the kind of naming rights that give us Burger King Academies,^[iv] or the Please Touch Museum Presented by McDonalds in Philadelphia^[v].  

The rise of what my colleague Allen Kanner first dubbed the commercialization of childhood@ has its roots in the political climate of the 1980s. Attacks on the Department of Education, along with a call to corporate America to do something about education in America^[vi], paved the way for Chris Whittle's Channel One mandatory sponsored newscasts and a host of other marketing schemes that exploit our mandatory schooling laws. No wonder Consumer Union called their wonderful treatise on marketing in schools, Captive Kids_^[vii]  

The mid 1980s also saw the deregulation of children's television, the beginning of an assault on the budget for Public Broadcasting, and weakening of anti trust laws which have never been used to squelch media mergers anyway^[viii]. The 1990s saw more cuts in funding for public broadcasting^[ix].  Now it's impossible to get a children's televison program produced without licencing agreements, and PBS airs programs like Teletubbies and Clifford the Big Red Dog which engage in promotions with fast food companies like McDonald's,^[x] Wendys,^[xi] and Chuck E. Cheese.  

Another contribution is the proliferation and increasing sophistication of electronic media. And as a nation, our embrace of technology constantly outpaces our understanding of its cultural, social and ethical implications. Twenty years ago, the major culprit in marketing to children was television. Now, marketers began to have direct access to children through a whole range of media that, thanks to advances in technology, is more visually compelling than ever before. The escalation of graphic violence in movies and television has occurred in part because the technology became available a more deadly version of the phenomena that led to all of that curlicue furniture in the Victorian era. It is now possible to graphically recreate a disembowelment, or melt an eyeball on the screen and so we do. And besides, violence sells.  

With a cynicism similar to the Just Say No@ solution to drug abuse, the industry spin is that parents not corporations are responsible for preventing the negative impact of marketing on children. And certainly, there are things parents can do. For one thing, we can take televisions and computers out of our child's bedrooms: 32% of children 2 to 7 have televisions in their rooms, as do 65% of children 8 to 18 ^[xii]. We can turn television off during meals. We can monitor our own consumerism and talk with children about the meaning of marketing messages.  

But we're here today because we know that parents can't do it alone. One family can't successfully combat a $12 billion industry. Parents and children need our help as professionals, advocates and activists. Taking our cues from the struggles for civil rights, women's rights, labor laws and environmental regulation, we also know that working together across disciplines, professions, race, class, and  political leanings is the key to stopping the commercial exploitation of children. That's why we formed SCEC.  That's why we're here today.