"Inappropriate advertising contributes to many kids' ills, from obesity to anorexia, to drinking booze and having sex too soon, and Congress should crack down on it, the American Academy of Pediatrics says."
Seems like advertising has the same affect on many adults.
Maybe a better role for government, if there is one, is to educate children about all the messages they are bombarded by. Not in the sense of one is right, or one is wrong, but how their responses are being manipulated.
Or better yet educate the adults, and let them educate their children.
Maybe a better role for government, if there is one, is to educate children about all the messages they are bombarded by.
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That's not good enough. The liberals and progressives have tried that for 40 years and they weren't satisfied with the results.
My Dad told me not to smoke 25 years ago. I didn't listen. I should have. Not because it's bad for my health, but because a quarter of a century later I have to listen to health Nazi's tell me what to do.
Parents have failed in the eyes of the left. Now the Gubmint is in charge.
Mad Magazine used to educate kids about the hoaxes in advertising claims.
During the whole life of the publisher, Bill Gaines rejected advertising because he felt it to be hypocritical to slam Pepsi and then advertise Coke. Then he died. He'd long sold out to Time-Life-Warner but it wasn't until after his death that they took on advertising and cheap partisan political slams.
There were some books published in the 1950s and 1960s that attempted to expose the psychological research that advertising firms had used. Our own government recommend them to national security officers during the Kennedy years; somehow I don't think they were pushing "Nation of Sheep" to help educated consumers as much as to adopt the same proven tactics of marketing.