This is a really important issue. The US group "Campaign for a commercial free childhood" have made a film called "Consuming children" here is a trailer http://www.commercialexploitation.org/events/consumingkids.html

Is shows how the unregulated exposure of children to adverts by rapacious companies means they are being trained to be hyper consumers. This is done in total disregard of their health and wellbeing. I watched a lot of the film and was saddened and insensed at the way our kids are being exploited.

In Clive Hamilton's latest book "Requiem for a species" he states that advertising to kids was about $100 million in 1984. Now it is $17 trillion. The difference is deregulation and a handing over to companies the ability to advertise however they like to our children.

A culture and society that does this in my mind is amoral, cruel and self-destructive. The sooner we all throw out the crazy idea that the market should be allowed to do what it wants the better. We need to nurture our kids health, wellbeing and spirit and then we all benefit.

Correction $17 billion not trillion in advertising to kids. Still scary though!

Stop their pocket money!

That'll put a halt to the little buggers' consumption.

glad to see someone mention clive hamilton..will try and get the new book now. Totally agree but this is no mean feat.. it takes a lot of work to engage a child often against their own desires in other than screen activities..and screen activities are so "easy" for parents(I am one).
The fruits (results) are already there in the older youth as well..where clubbing and drinking etc are added to the mix of unconnecting uncaring activities.
This just a gut reaction..

oh , and would it be trite to mention the other child related advertising issue at the moment?? ie OUTDOOR ADVERTISING SHOULD BE G_RATED just thought I'd add that!!

'This is done in total disregard of their health and wellbeing'

Rubbish. As Our Ford says, 'ending is better than mending'.

Buy a new one instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State.

I'd say that's a strong regard for children's current and future health and well being.

tongue in cheek no doubt?? I hope.. havent you read clive hamilton?

Haven't you read Aldous Huxley?

tongue in cheek was to Houellebecq..just in case of misunderstanding

What about the children? The future is really going to be a terrible, frightening place .... with people writing articles like this.

If it's not the anti-pops telling us to cut immigration, get rid of the baby bonus, paid maternity leave and international students because the earth's poles are melting, then we have Babs who wants us to stop our kids watching TV because they might buy stuff and by doing so, will destroy the earth.

It's a long, long, long, long, long bow to pull there.

I'm a proud growthist. I want people to have more babies not less. I want kids to play dangerous games, preferably with toys that cost heaps, and have the time of their lives. I want to see a world where intelligence and intuition can immediately see through hokum arguments such as Babs.

I don't want them sitting around in a circle talking about what it means to be a man or woman ala Steve Biddupp and the cult of navel gazing.

The whole of western society is geared toward consumption as an end in itself. As Houellebecq says, it's "the bedrock of economic and social stability" - we have fashioned it that way.
Cheryl may wish for children to enjoy a warped version of life - constantly entertained, force-fed information - at home and at school, no creative input in their lives and a resulting total dislocation from the knowledge that sustains life.
Poor western consumer society - when the bubble bursts, we will be the ones who are helpless.

Au contraire Poirot, you know little about kids. They are discriminating little critters who can see through a ridiculous soft soap sell a kilometre a way.

This is going to come as a hell of a shock to some but in the main, we drive one car, eat three meals a day, own or rent one house or abode and generally adhere to a mean when it comes to consumption. The anti-pops have gone down the anti-people path when wiser heads know the issue is energy.

Does this article by Babs not seem to you, well, odd? It's tenet is that we need to indoctrinate kids not to be consumers (quality? quantity? - what metrics does she use?) in order to save the planet from ..... what?

I personally like these articles. They take a certain form. Posit reasonable suggestion, add layer upon layer of unsubstantiated rhetoric and then make a wildly sweeping statement that vainly tries to tie the original premise with a barking mad conclusion.

I wonder just who funds, & controls this ACCM? It sounds like a Greenpeace offshoot to me.

We find they want to "protect" our kids from those nasty advertisers, but are desperate to expose them to as much "green" propaganda as they possibly can.

A real worry is the idea that watching TV gives us global warming. Wow, & all this time they have been saying it's because of that plant food, CO2.

Just as well we have someone like Barbara to set us on the greenie path to poverty, & eternal happiness, without her & her like, we might never know how unhappy we should be.

Dear Cheryl,
Children are not as discriminating as you think. You simplify the western malaise. And it's not only children who are sucked in. We might drive one car individually, but most families own two or three. We might eat three meals a day, but at least two of them are probably eaten on the run and most of them are pre-packaged or tossed together by a kid just out of highschool who could be putting their time toward attaining a real skill. Our houses are born perfectly formed, at least twice as big as they need to be.
We adhere to an inflated mean when it comes to consumption because we have been conditioned to do so at an early age. Indoctrinating children is really just a continuum in the chain - to the rest of us it is so ingrained that some of us have lost the ability to question it.

People have been aspiring to achieve for millennium, and consumption is largely a sign of achievement.

Luddites like BB might like to look back a few decades to "when life was simpler" with rose tinted glasses, but people were no different then, they just had less technology.

Life without technology was generally short, dreary and tragic. While wishing that life could be better, looking at the past is at best myopic, and at worst self destructive.

Well said Shadow Minister.

We all want the best and more for our children.

Who are these people who want less for their children?

Poirot, this is so confusing "constantly entertained, force-fed information - at home and at school, no creative input in their lives and a resulting total dislocation from the knowledge that sustains life"

Constantly entertained, for fed information .. but no creative input in their lives .. what? Did you read that before you posted it?

What total dislocation? I assure you kids are not dislocated from life or vox populi, they may have no interest for things you think are good, butt hat's hardly current, is it?

The young today are learning how to deal with constant information, in huge volumes - you may wish for a simpler life with few stimulants, but that's not how it is anymore .. and never will be again, well unless you move to North Korea - everyone else is trying to grow, inprove and expand.

Kids do not want less, it's the human condition to strive for more, to improve their lot for themselves and their offsprong .. so let them, it's good for them.

Why do have so many luddites in the community today, probably the same ones who do not want the climate to change! It will change regardless of what we do and the young will seek ever more information and stimulation.

No, odo,(sigh) I didn't read it before I posted - I am capable of composing my own sentences.

Always the same call from those who advocate extreme consumption, never-ending growth and information overload. The minute someone suggests a more measured level of consumption, they are labelled Luddites and invited to take a look at North Korea.

I get it now , odo. You are saying that what I wrote didn't make sense to you. What I was getting at is the lack of creative endeavour required by the average child in exploring his/her world. Throughout history, humans have learned and developed by hands-on interaction with the world that surrounds them.
All too soon childhood is now usurped by television and virtual computer worlds (not to mention their collective incarceration away from society in daycare and educational institutions). Even the toys that are in such abundance offer a limited range of uses - they are designed to do a few things and when they are digested, they are consigned to a cupboard.
You seem to equate the constant bombardment of information as somehow an enhancement of a child's creative abilities. Children become creative by seeking their own information and acting on it with mind and hands - not by sitting in a chair and having it thrown at them.

Poirot, I think you worry too much and don't actually see what Kids are watching these days, you don't see what's available ..

There is a lot of TV that is inspiring and uplifting for kids - it's not all Disney teen boys and girls.

Lighten up, that's how the world is .. you appear to be stuck in a world of the past where the only allowable stimulation is basket weaving or throwing a ball.

The world you want, simply doesn't exist .. not in a modern society, perhaps in more primitive or controlled ones they do. Not here in the big cities though, where we seem to turn out lots of creative and clever young people - sure the odd one here and there goes bad, but they do that in your nirvana society as well.

Kids today tell me stuff all the time that I am amazed at.

Kids are clever and resiliant, stop worrying so much over them.

When you say creative, what are we talking about here, you want something physically done, like craft (?) not all kids want to do that.

They want stimulation, that is not available from the progressive whiney, unionised and almost brain dead teachers we have in our public school systems is it? (that will irritate some people, but it needs to be said - it's not all about control and trying to "guide" kids with progressive values, they reject it)

Excellent article, Barbara.

I have been working on the issue of the sexualisation of children (a particularly nasty manifestation of the commercialisation of childhood) for a number of years now, and it is very clear to me that it is not just a social but also ultimately an environmental issue.

Scientific predictions for where the world will be in the next 50 years are horrific, for anyone sober enough to consider them. We either need to work out how to do economic growth very differently, or we need to work out a new form of economics. Economic needs being met for more than a fortunate few ultimately depends on a functioning society, which in turn depends on a functioning environment - and the latter is, by overwhelming scientific consensus, under great stress and indeed in some places starting to collapse. (Houllebecq et al are somewhat fatally out of touch with reality here.)

The world our children will most likely face will be in many ways very different from our world today... and not, overall, in good ways. And does focusing their attention on the latest celebrity or consumer gadget help in preparing them to face this future world in productive ways? It does not - it is not only bad for the next generation in disabling them from being able to face the future (and as such is a gross betrayal of society's responsibility to the next generation), but it also increases the problems both environmentally (pushing continued overconsumption) and socially (for example, I doubt very much that your average environmental refugee will look much like a celebrity).

I give up. I'm talking to a bunch of light weights and that's being generous.

You guys must get a sore neck watching stuff fly over your heads.

You're not the first to think,
that everything has been thought before.
I spoke to an echo and he said,
I'm not satisfied I want something more.

Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.
The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous.

In fact, I'm off for some soma.

A gramme is better than a damn.

Brainwashing of children by the environmental movement is the big worry.
The environmentalists falsely assume that the atmospheric greenhouse effect is real, and consequently CO2 emissions must be capped. The simple truth is that the greenhouse effect only exists in a greenhouse because convective cooling is eliminated, whereas convection is the major process of heat transfer in the earth's atmosphere.
There is no scientific evidence that proves the supposed relationship between CO2 concentration and air temperature in the earth's atmosphere. Such a relationship only exists in the minds of those who have reached political consensus regarding acceptance of environmentalist ideology. Scientific experiments prove the lack of effect that CO2 content has on air temperature.
Without the atmospheric greenhouse effect, there is no anthropogenic global warming and, consequently, no need to cap CO2 emissions. Hopefully, this finding will help calm the edgy Clive Hamilton's nerves

“Greening” our children?

Dear Barbara, two things to point out and both relate to your “false premise”.

Firstly, these “our children” over whom you infer some sort of collective ownership are in fact other peoples children and not yours. You have no right to even suggest you have a role that places you between parents and their children.

Secondly, their adoption and inculcation of your perspectives on greening and consumption are absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with you or your personal persuasions. You have no right to “need” other people’s children to be bought up with your values.

I am appalled at the number of articles appearing on this forum that promote social engineering and indoctrination of other people’s children. The true sickness in our society is exemplified by those whose ideology and social values fail to gain traction with adult minds and so resort to pursuing vulnerable children.

Is there something significant missing in your life that compels you to interfere in the lives of others?

spindoc,

You write that social commentators have no right to suggest a role that places them between parents and their children. However, you fail to realise that our society does not promote that premise. Consumer society places itself squarely between parents and their children. All too soon children are sucked into the system. At the earliest opportunity parents are encouraged to hand over responsibility to outside influences for the indoctrination of their children into consumer culture.
It's like a conveyor belt, these days,. Have your baby - enjoy it for a few years - it you are able. Then at the earliest opportunity deliver him or her to an institution to begin its education in consumer culture.This also frees up parents to rush back to the workplace to do their part.
Everything these days is geared to feed the furnace of desire and growth.

Dear Poirot, absolute rot.

“You write that social commentators have no right to suggest a role that places them between parents and their children.” Yes I did say that, absolutely, they can do what they want with “their” children, not anyone else’s. I have yet to meet a “social commentator” whose opinion I value, let alone allowing them to pass those values on to my kids. It’s none of their bl@@dy business.

“Consumer society places itself squarely between parents and their children.” Rubbish; that is and always will be a parental decision. If parents are not up to supervising the exposure of their children to marketing, by whatever means, that is parental failure and is their business and no one else’s.

Poirot, no one, not even kids have any place between husband and wife; it’s their relationship, owned by them. Likewise Mum has a relationship with child, their business; Dad has a relationship with same child, their business. Mum and Dad have a joint role as parents and if they leave a relationship space between them in that parenting role, the children may well try to occupy that space, intensely personal and private, their business.

For anyone to suggest that they have a right of any description between parents and their own children is astonishing arrogance. Are you now telling me that a social commentator, or anyone else for that matter, should have the right to contradict my parental attitudes, values and beliefs?

Children are exposed more and more to consumer marketing, just as they are exposed to ideological marketing. How much that impacts their values until they reach adulthood at the legal age of 16 is a parental responsibility and part of today’s parenting challenge .To suggest that “others” should get involved to impose their values is socially divisive and destructive.

Some wish to see the next generation have a lesser quality of life than their parents enjoyed. Why? They start with a false premise or “cause”, wrap themselves in guilt and then try to impose their guilt on other peoples’ children.

They are sick and up themselves.

spindoc,

Social engineering and indoctrination have been agents in the service of consumer culture and the mainstay of industrial society ever since the Industrial Revolution and have reached their zenith in the present day.
They over arch life in modern society to such an extent that many people, such as yourself, fail to see that the entire framework of work and leisure are exercised only within their parameters.