This is a first-rate book — well
researched and passionately written. The author is Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School and Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker
Children’s Center in Boston. She is also well-known as a puppeteer and
ventriloquist, skills that she puts to good use in child therapy. Also very
pertinent to this book, she is co-founder of the coalition Stop Commercial
Exploitation of Children.

There is a very fundamental
question underpinning this book — is there or is there not any limit to what
free enterprise capitalism can do? More specifically, does or should the First
Amendment allow the food industry, the clothing industry, the toy industry, the
soft drinks industry, etc. to deliberately use advertising to target children,
even babies, to home in on single-parent families and families where there are
insecurities and feelings of guilt, to deliberately undermine parents, to train
children how to nag and wear parents down so as to get their way, to pander to
children’s desire to appear older than they are, to encourage sexual precocity
and even to encourage minors to smoke and drink alcohol. Linn has found that
there is an unholy alliance of left and right which is reluctant to limit the
use of the First Amendment. The left is reluctant because free speech is the
touchstone of liberty. The right is reluctant because free enterprise
capitalism should be unfettered. Both sides are uneasy about children being
targeted but won’t make a move. The author is trying to break that deadlock.

Linn has accumulated a vast amount
of evidence about what the advertising industry is up to. She has even gone to
one of their advertising conferences. The sad fact is that many psychologists
have become mercenaries and are selling their skills to industries deliberately
targeting children. They are prevaricating about what exactly they are doing e.g.
pretending that Ronald McDonald is not selling anything. "He’s instead
about fun, trust, happiness, and other warm, fuzzy feelings." (page 28)
Psychologists are using their child development knowledge to enable
advertisements to home in accurately on their target audience. Not that parents
are blameless either. Research shows that many parents are now propping up
their babies as young as six months old in front of the television. Advertisers
are, as a result, trying to make even babies brand-loyal! From the cradle to
the grave is taking on a whole new meaning.

The advertising industry points out
that it is merely doing its job. If parents don’t like it, then they can ration
their children’s television viewing and vet their magazines. Ultimately, they
say, parents have the right of veto in the shop or mall. In one sense, the advertisers
are right. Parents can restrict television viewing. They can ensure that their
children read suitable magazines — at least in the home. Yes, they can
ultimately say ‘no’ in the supermarket or whatever. However, most children do
not live in Amish communities. Parents can not keep them hermetically sealed
off from the outside world. The friends of one’s children are also very
influential. Besides, advertising of one sort or another has even penetrated
schools with so-called ‘pouring rights’ and sponsorship of all kinds.

Linn goes into certain types of
advertising in considerable depth. The food industry comes in for severe
scrutiny and is found severely wanting. With the inexorable rise in obesity and
type 2 diabetes, the fast food industry is in the firing line. However, it is
successfully avoiding being penalized both by obfuscation of the real issues
(as with Ronald McDonald) or by appearing to be involved in quite harmless
pastimes such as collecting a set of fifty extra special Matchbox cars. "The
catch was that six of these vehicles were found at only McDonald’s as part of a
Happy Meal." (page 22)

Violence and sex come in for some
close-up scrutiny and the results are frightening. We know that continued
exposure to violence desensitizes children and both in the States and in the
U.K. we have real life crimes committed by children to prove it often in
copycat actions based on films they have seen. And yet gratuitous and often
extreme violence is often to be found in programs aimed at children. Sex too
has become a commodity which advertisers try to sell to an ever younger
audience especially the so-called ‘tweens’.

Cigarettes and alcohol come in for
the magnifying glass as well. The reviewer was shocked by Linn’s statements
that "people who start drinking before the age of fifteen are four times
more likely to develop a dependency on alcohol than those who start drinking
when they’re twenty-one. Lifetime alcohol abuse and dependence is greatest for
those who begin drinking between the ages of eleven and fourteen (or
younger)" and the "younger children are when they begin to smoke, the
more likely it is that they will be become (sic) regular smokers and the
less likely that they will ever successfully quit." (pages 157-158)
Readers may naively think that children are protected from alcohol and smoking
advertisements but the author reckons that in 2001 "the alcohol industry
reached 89 percent of teens who watch television" (page 161) while the
tobacco industry is very successfully reaching youngsters "through
magazines, billboards, advertising, displays — often in little convenience
stores, sports and concert promotions, direct mail, and sales of branded
clothing and accessories." (page 171)

Linn’s conclusion is that society
must unite to protect children from predatory advertising. To do so, she
suggests practical steps and in an appendix lists all sorts of organizations
that people can join.

The book is well documented with
excellent endnotes, bibliography and index. There are mercifully few typos so
the book has been well proof-read.

This is a superb book and deserves
to be read by all parents — and teachers. Those involved in the advertising
industry would also do well to read it. They might well have their conscience
pricked.

© 2005
Kevin M. Purday

Kevin
Purday works at The Modern English School, Cairo, Egypt, and has a Master’s
degree in the Philosophy &
Ethics of Mental Health from the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Warwick.

Categories: ChildhoodDisorders, Ethics