Pediatricians Call for Less Advertising to Children

PEDIATRICIANS CALL FOR LESS ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Marilyn Elias]
Pediatricians should lobby for a ban or severe curtailment on widespread school-based ads, and Congress should prohibit commercials for “junk food” on TV shows watched mostly by young children, the American Academy of Pediatrics says today. The new policy on advertising to kids was prompted by alarm over rising rates of childhood obesity in an atmosphere where kids increasingly are targeted by marketers, says pediatrician Victor Strasburger, the policy's senior author. Since the pediatricians last weighed in on the issue 11 years ago, ads have cropped up everywhere kids turn: the Internet, cellphones, video games, school campuses and even school buses, Strasburger says. Last year, advertisers spent $1.4 billion per month marketing to children — 15% more than in 2004, according to James McNeal, a children's marketing expert and author of The Kids Market: Myths and Realities. An Institute of Medicine report last year found evidence that food and beverage marketing to children 12 and under leads them to ask for and eat and drink non-nutritious products that are high in calories. The new policy calls for Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to limit commercials on children's TV to five to six minutes an hour, a 50% cut from what's now allowed. The pediatrics group also called on makers of Viagra and similar drugs to run commercials only on shows that air after 10 p.m. These ads “make sexual activity seem like a recreational sport,” while birth control commercials that could cut teen pregnancy rates are rarely aired, the policy says.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20061204/bl_bottomstrip_pedes04.art.htm