Margo Maine, Ph.D.  

Children in western cultures are immersed in an “Adcult” of commercial exploitation, as insidious and destructive as any cult can be. Television alone confronts them with 40,000 ads per year. Constant exposure to these external messages robs them of self-determination, self-awareness, and self-esteem and turns young children into insatiable consumers.  While this is great for the economy, it makes children dependent on external, material goods rather than on their own inner resources and their relationships with others.

This “Adcult” is thoughtfully crafted, as advertisers spend endless dollars on research so they can effectively market to children. Organizations like Kid Connection specialize in “psycho-cultural youth research”, with anthropologists and psychologists interviewing and analyzing how kids aged 6 to 20 use the Internet, react to images, and what they care about. Nintendo US interviews 1500 kids per week. Sadly, advertising executives may know more about children, what they need and want, than parents do.

Children are easy targets. They do not yet know the difference between reality and fantasy, cannot necessarily differentiate the ad from the show, and they do not have a critical perspective that allows them to reject some of the messages that come their way. The mass media have created a unique and universal form of peer pressure that grows every year. Advertisers particularly market to little girls, to mold them into the role of consumer, as 85% of purchases in the US are made by females.

Despite the progress women have made, advertising is a throwback to yesteryear’s gender stereotypes.  Boys are shown as active and adventurous, girls as passive, sometimes silly and other times fragile. Women of all ages in ads are depicted as subservient, in size, position, and influence.

No wonder girls growing up in the United States feel so dismissed, disrespected, and disempowered.  Girls are then easy prey to messages that contribute to body image distortions, preoccupation with appearance, image, and weight, and feelings of inadequacy. Between the constant unrealistic, over-sexualized and underfed images of girls and the equally constant food cues, commercial exploitation of children helps to create “BODY WARS,” the precursors for eating disorders, especially in girls.  

• 51% of 9-10 year-old girls feel better about themselves when they are dieting.

• 9% of 9 year-old girls have vomited to lose weight.

• 81% of 10 year-old girls are afraid of being fat.

• 70% of normal weight high school girls feel fat and are dieting.

• The number one wish of girls aged 11 to 17 is to lose weight.

Years of illness, depression and death are the endpoint of such exploitation. What a waste of the potential of these girls’ lives and creativity. We can no longer accept this violation of children. We must begin to protect children from the constant attacks of commercial exploitation, restore their childhood innocence, and prevent the devastation of Body Wars.