Corporations would not spend millions for a 30 second Super Bowl ad, if it didn’t have an affect.
Direct that at young minds is unconscionable. But corporations will find a way, if not through funding sports, they’ll write the books and your math problems will be, “if Jimmy likes Pepsi, and Sally likes Coke, should Jimmy buy 2 Pepsi’s or get a new friend.”

The late night shows, with Kimmel and Leno, have started doing live commercials on their shows because people aren’t watching the commercials. And movies have product placement. If the TV is on, how do parents explain the side affects of pharmaceutical drug ads, or those E.D. ads! Magazines are 3/4ths advertisement. It is so pervasive.

If “no child is to be left behind”, “families first”, and “it takes a village” are more than words, we should do something, but it has to be a combination of better parenting and legislation.
A good parent can and does say no, a good parent takes their knowledge and educates their kids. After all, these kids are going to be in the real world someday, so it’s parents’ job to equip their kids. Education does not stop at school.

The scary part is when you hear the neuropsychology professional scanning brains to see how shopping and ads affect them. Icks!

Another strategy might be a national public service campaign exposing common advertising ploys and promoting saving over reckless spending. If one TV commercial out of a thousand showed how to recognize and resist logical fallacies, the next generation of consumers would be smarter, more confident and less gullible or prone to accumulating needless debt.

Our society is slowly waking up to the obesity epidemic and realizing we can’t go on eating the way we have been. We still need to address the consequences of financial gluttony and stop encouraging rampant spending.

I agree on keeping advertising out of our schools. Channel One and pouring rights in schools are two big evils.

No need to look that far away from home! The Canadian province of Québec (which shares a border with the staes of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) has a legislation, through its consumer protection board, banning direct advertising to children under the age of 13 since April 30, 1980.

Certain provisions exist so that advertising kid-centric product is allowed, but the person addressed in the commercial must not be under 13, and the ads must be non-flashy (read: reasonably realistic). Ads for products that can also appeal to kids as well as adults must be aired on shows that have an audience of less than 15% in the prohibited age group.

This law has been in effect for most of my life; I have to say I was somewhat shocked as a child when I got to watch an American channel for the first time, with their flashy toy ads all over the place. Ours have always addressed the parent, trying to sell them the toy (does not mean the kids are not somewhat seduced, but there really is a difference as there is no playing on the “cool” effect).

As for free speech, I do not see how limiting acarefully planned media message infringes in any way on one’s right to express themselves. I work in marketing (in a field that I chose for its ethics) and trust me, there is a very thick line between a sales pitch and an opinion. Anyone who pretends otherwise is likely trying to sell you something (!).

Thanks for posting this information in detail on your blog. To be entirely honest with you and your readers whenever an author calls for sweeping government intervention like this, it makes me want to blow my stack.

Governments are typically inefficient and their policies often have unintended consequences. In addition, why should congress infringe on the constitutional rights of advertisers simply because what the sell is unpopular?

To address the kind of action Schor wants to take, something like one of Ralph Nader’s PRIGs would be a far better choice, involving the federal bureaucracy will just make things worse.

Good reason not to watch MTV. Or television in general. But you can’t stop your kids from watching this junk in other people’s homes, you can’t stop them from being blasted with it in today’s schools…and maybe this is stuff that kids shouldn’t be exposed to all the time. It’s not about whether kids have disposable income to buy stuff right this minute. It’s about what they’re socialized to think is important and how they will be trained up to think and behave over the years. Maybe, just maybe, attempts at mind control by commercial interests SHOULD be regulated.

As for the efficacy of such legislation–Johanna makes a good point in comment no. 1. We have plenty of regulation on our media–no more cigarettes on kids’ shows, if you’ve noticed. These regulations work fine and make sense. Moreover, while I don’t know much about it I’m pretty sure several countries in Europe have successfully enacted legislation restricting advertising to children.

The FCC has a lot more rules than you might think about commercials and tv content. I remember when I was a kid I saw ads for Flintstone vitamins– now vitamin companies are banned from advertising during kids shows because kids were eating the vitamins like candy.

So it wouldn’t be too hard or too costly for a junk food commercial ban.

I think that it’s always easy to say, Get the government involved, in lieu of a real solution like – start teaching your kids what’s what and be sure they’re adequately prepared for the world as it is, not a sheltered view of it where the government’s hand is broad and regulatory. That’s too close to communism to me.

If you trust adults with the responsibility to be able to choose what to buy and not buy and decide how they are affected by advertising, then I think it is important to realize that kids don’t have serious disposable income with which to make purchases – that is up to the parents (who as the book showed are influenced by their children). But it is ultimately the parents’ decision on what to buy and not buy. And theoretically, when the children grow up and have the income, they will be mature enough to make these decisions.