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Ana Paula Nacif
AS CONSUMERS, we all know that corporates do whatever they can to ‘help’ us part with our money. But what’s worrying is that they are now increasingly using what many would call unethical tactics to influence our children.
In her book, This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood, Sharon Beder, says that children can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products.
And corporate marketers have no shame in trying to make children become life-long consumers of a certain brand. Free gifts, samples, games, competitions and even school materials are now used to entice children to choose certain products.
In the UK, television advertising for children using celebrities and well-known TV programmes’ characters are nothing new and even pre-school children are being targeted. And Beder says that “three quarters of food manufacturers advertising on the internet have designed websites specifically for children, some for very young children; many others have websites that have a children's section”.
Whereas in other countries the regulations are more stringent – no advertising aimed at children under 12 is allowed in Sweden and in Norway there is a ban on all advertising during children’s TV programmes – the UK seems to be a paradise for marketers targeting children. Advertising codes of practice are voluntary and TV advertisements are covered only by guidelines set out by the Independent Television Commission (ITC). The problem is that the guidelines are not good enough.
This means that food manufacturers and retailers, for example, continue to encourage children to choose less healthy options. In their defense, they say that their food is OK as part of a balanced diet and that it is the parent’s responsibility to ensure that children eat well and exercise regularly.
I’m sure parents want to encourage their children to eat healthily, but as many mothers and fathers will tell you, children being bombarded with junk food advertisement doesn’t help. Not to mention the fact that many manufacturers and retailers are misleading even parents. For example, something with ‘no artificial flavours or colours’ can also be full of artificial preservatives and many leading brand children’s cereals marketed as ‘healthy’ are full of salt and sugar.
Sustain (www.sustainweb.org) is campaigning to protect children from junk food marketing and it is time the UK regulators looked at the continent for guidance. I’m sure Swedish and Norwegian children are not missing out on anything.
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