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Reining in the Commercialization of Childhood

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EarthEd

Part of the book series: State of the World ((STWO))

Abstract

In 2012, The Lorax, an animated big-budget version of Dr. Seuss’s classic cautionary tale about overconsumption and greed, arrived in theaters. Accompanying its release was a slew of brand-licensed cross-promotions targeted directly to kids. Children were encouraged to visit stores like Pottery Barn Kids, Target, and Whole Foods for Lorax-themed promotions, to eat Truffula Chip Pancakes at the breakfast chain IHOP, to pack their lunches with Lorax YoKids Yogurt, and to urge their parents to buy Hewlett-Packard printers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Susan Linn and Josh Golin, “Save the Lorax, Shun the Stuff,” Huffington Post, March 1, 2012.

  2. 2.

    Emma Brown, “The Lorax Helps Market Mazda SUVs to Elementary School Children Nationwide,” Washington Post, February 28, 2016.

  3. 3.

    Susan Gregory Thomas, Buy Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 109–35; Duncan Hood, “Is Advertising to Kids Wrong? Marketers Respond,” Kidscreen, November 1, 2000, 15.

  4. 4.

    Dale Kunkel, “Children and Television Advertising,” in Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer, eds., The Handbook of Children and Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 375–93; James Vincent, “Teens Can’t Tell the Difference Between Google Ads and Search Results,” The Verge, November 20, 2015.

  5. 5.

    Anup Shah, “Children as Consumers,” Global Issues Blog, November 21, 2010; Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (New York: Scribner, 2004), 21; Bruce Horovitz, “Marketing to Kids Gets More Savvy with New Technologies,” USA Today, August 14, 2011, B1.

  6. 6.

    American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media, “Media Use by Children Under the Age of Two,” Pediatrics 128, no. 5 (October 2011): 1,040–45; Victoria Rideout, Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America (San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media Inc., 2011), 44; Pooja S. Tandon et al., “Preschoolers’ Total Daily Screen Time at Home and by Type of Child Care,” Journal of Pediatrics 158, no. 2 (February 2011): 297–300; Common Sense Media Inc., The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens (San Francisco, CA: 2015).

  7. 7.

    Debra Holt et al., Children’s Exposure to TV Advertising in 1977 and 2004 (Washington, DC: Federal Trade Commission, 2007); Jane Wakefield, “Children Spend Six Hours or More a Day on Screens,” BBC News, March 27, 2015; Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva et al., Study on the Impact of Marketing Through Social Media, Online Games and Mobile Applications on Children’s Behavior (Brussels: European Commission Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency, 2016), 66.

  8. 8.

    Patrick Callan, “Fast Forward,” Kidscreen, June 16, 2016.

  9. 9.

    Lily Hay Newman, “NY Cracks Down on Mattel and Hasbro for Tracking Kids Online,” Wired, September 13, 2016; John Herrman, “Who’s Too Young for an App? Musical.ly Tests the Limits,” New York Times, September 17, 2016.

  10. 10.

    Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), “International Coalition to McDonald’s: Keep Your Word and Ban Ronald McDonald from Schools,” July 29, 2014.

  11. 11.

    T. Lobstein and S. Dibb, “Evidence of a Possible Link Between Obesogenic Food Advertising and Child Overweight,” Obesity Reviews 6, no. 3 (2005): 203–08; Marjorie Hogan and Victor Strasburger, “Body Image, Eating Disorders, and the Media,” Adolescent Medicine: State of the Art Reviews 19, no. 3 (2008): 521–46; Dimitri Christakis, “Virtual Violence: Council on Communications and Media,” Pediatrics 138, no. 1 (July 2016); American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (Washington, DC: 2007); Moniek Buijzen and Patti Valkenburg, “The Effects of Television Advertising on Materialism, Parent–Child Conflict, and Unhappiness: A Review of Research,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 24, no. 4 (2003): 437–56.

  12. 12.

    Brad Tuttle, “Why We Are Eating Fewer Happy Meals,” Time, April 23, 2012.

  13. 13.

    Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002).

  14. 14.

    Jean Twenge and Tim Kasser, “Generational Changes in Materialism and Work Centrality, 1976–2007: Associations with Temporal Changes in Societal Insecurity and Materialistic Role Modeling,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39, no. 7 (July 2013): 883–97; Jeffrey Brand and Bradley Greenberg, “Commercials in the Classroom: The Impact of Channel One Advertising,” Journal of Advertising 34, no. 1 (1994): 18–21; Vandana and Usha Lenka, “A Review on the Role of Media in Increasing Materialism Among Children,” Journal of Business Research 133 (May 15, 2014): 456–64; Sara Kamal, Shu-Chuan Chu, and Mahmood Pedram, “Materialism, Attitudes, and Social Media Usage and Their Impact on Purchase Intention of Luxury Fashion Goods Among American and Arab Young Generations,” Journal of Interactive Advertising 13, no. 1 (2013): 27–40.

  15. 15.

    William Kilbourne and Gregory Pickett, “How Materialism Affects Environmental Beliefs, Concern, and Environmentally Responsible Behavior,” Journal of Business Research 61, no. 9 (September 2008): 885–93; Gregory Maio et al., “Changing, Priming, and Acting on Values: Effects via Motivational Relations in a Circular Model,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97, no. 4 (2009): 699–715.

  16. 16.

    CCFC, “Stop McTeacher’s Nights,” http://commercialfreechildhood.org/action/stop-mcteachers-nights.

  17. 17.

    Consumers Union, Captive Kids: A Report on Commercial Pressure on Kids in School (Yonkers, NY: 1998); Michele Simon, Best Public Relations That Money Can Buy: A Guide to Food Industry Front Groups (Washington, DC: Center for Food Safety, 2013); Sourcewatch (The Center for Media and Democracy), “American Farm Bureau Federation,” www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Farm_Bureau_Federation, viewed September 22, 2016; Timna Jacks and Henrietta Cook, “Big Business Muscles into Schools,” The Age, September 17, 2016.

  18. 18.

    Kunkel, “Children and Television Advertising,” 375–93.

  19. 19.

    Consumers International, “Advertising to Children Is Now Illegal in Brazil,” April 10, 2014; Daybreak Kamloops, “Senator Nancy Green Raine Wants to Ban Junk Food Ads Directed at Kids,” CBC News, September 29, 2016.

  20. 20.

    Sacha Pfeiffer, “An Ad or a Show? Some Say YouTube Kids Blurs the Line. Group Wants Rules for TV Ads Applied to Children’s Video App,” Boston Globe, April 21, 2015.

  21. 21.

    Farida Shaheed, Report of the Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado, 2014); Center for a New American Dream, Analysis Report: New American Dream Survey 2014 (Charlottesville, VA: 2014).

  22. 22.

    Bill Bigelow, “Scholastic Inc. Pushing Coal: A 4th Grade Curriculum Lies Through Omission,” Rethinking Schools (Summer 2011): 30–33.

  23. 23.

    Bill Bigelow, “This Is What Happened When Scholastic Tried to Bring Pro-coal Propaganda into Schools,” Yes Magazine, March 6, 2014; Tamar Lewin, “Scholastic InSchool Backing Off Corporate Ties,” New York Times, August 1, 2011, A10.

  24. 24.

    Common Sense Media Inc., The Common Sense Census.

  25. 25.

    M. Marinelli et al., “Hours of Television Viewing and Sleep Duration,” JAMA Pediatrics 168, no. 5 (May 2014): 458–64; Erik C. Landhuis et al., “Programming Obesity and Poor Fitness: The Long-term Impact of Childhood Television,” Obesity 16, no. 6 (2008): 1,457–59; Yalda T. Uhls et al., “Five Days at Outdoor Education Camp Without Screens Improves Preteen Skills with Nonverbal Emotion Cues,” Computers in Human Behavior 39 (October 2014): 387–92. Box 13-1 from “McDonald’s Japan Posts Profit Boosted by Pokémon Go Partnership,” Advertising Age, August 9, 2016.

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Golin, J., Campbell, M. (2017). Reining in the Commercialization of Childhood. In: EarthEd. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-843-5_13

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