Status Updates From Consuming Kids: Protecting ...

Given the current influence of sophisticated electronic media technology and the glorification of consumerism, it's becoming increasingly difficult to provide children with an environment that encourages creativity or original thinking... The time and space available for our own ideas and their own images... shrinks with every film or tv program-inevitably accompanied by a flood of "tie-in" toys, books, and clothing.

"By marketing nursery linens, mobiles, and crib toys decorated with brand logos or images of licensed characters, marketers are doing exactly what they can to ensure that babies will recognize and request similarly adorned products ranging from cereal to stuffed toys as soon as their verbal skills evolve."

"Comparing the advertising of two or three decades ago to the commercialism that permeates our children's world is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb. The explosion of marketing aimed at kids today is precisely targeted, refined by scientific method, and honed by child psychologists."