Advertising is a $250 billion a year business,
and children and teens are lucrative targets for
its messages, viewing 40,000 ads a year on TV
alone. Advertisers increasingly seek to insert
ads into school busses, schools, the Internet,
movies, and video games.
Pediatricians, concerned about the effects of
advertising on children and teens’ health,
have issued a call for strict limits on advertising
to children. Citing the harmful effects of alcohol,
tobacco, and drug advertising, food advertising
and obesity, and sex in advertising, the American
Academy of Pediatrics calls on doctors to be aware
of the effects of advertising on children. The
academy suggests media education for young people
to help them understand the goals and effects
of advertising, and also seeks to work with parents
and community groups to ask the Federal government
to establish limits on advertising to children.
For more resources on understanding the effects
of advertising on children and ideas for what
you can do to limit their exposure to ad messages,
visit the National Institute on Media and the
Family’s Web site at www.mediawise.org.
Join the MediaWise Network and download your free
Parent’s
Survival Guide to Advertising.
To read the full statement from the American Academy
of Pediatrics see: http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/
abstract/pediatrics;118/6/2563. |
