Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood recently revamped its website. One of the new features includes a fact sheet that provides the following information regarding modern marketing aimed at children (with citations to primary sources): Marketing directly to children is a factor in the childhood obesity epidemic. Marketing also encourages…
If you buy your child an expensive and detailed toy based upon the latest new movie, you'll end up with a toy that can be used in only one way and your child will quickly get bored with that toy. It's happened over and over. I’ve seen it with my…
I'm currently reading a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World (2008). The main point of the book is that modern parents tend to over-schedule their children and otherwise deprive them of time for creative play. For instance, many parents are letting…
On June 7, 2008, I had the opportunity to discuss the commercialization of American children with Josh Golin, the Associate Director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. Josh’s two-part interview was sponsored by—no one. Isn’t this total lack of commercial sponsorship a pleasant change of pace? People who warn about the commercialization of our children sound quaint or even shrill to most other Americans. After all, how could it possibly be a bad thing to buy lots and lots of things for our children, to “spoil” them? As Josh indicates in this interview, there is now scientific data substantiating that buying children more things is harming them. More stuff (and the anticipation of yet more stuff) leads to a warped set of attitudes and priorities, as well as obesity and attention disorders. I enjoy talking with Josh because he makes his case clearly and enthusiastically. You can see this for yourself by clicking on the two videos of his interview. What CCFC offers in place of a chokingly endless stream of products is common sense: children can thrive without owning the toys hawked by merchandisers. Instead of more toys, children need more creative play and more time developing real life relationships with other children and adults in their communities.
Part I - Interview of Josh Golin
We all know that American middle class children don’t need most of possessions they have (they are a lot like their parents in this regard). Because there is a limited number of hours in a child’s life, giving children more of what they don’t need leaves them with less time and energy for the sorts of things they do need, such as physical fitness, healthy relationships and creative play.
What? The White House is endangering us by withholding information?
This is getting to be a familiar story, right? Here’s the typical plot: There’s something going on that poses a serious risk to Americans, and the White House decides to protect big corporations rather than protect the people at risk.
This time, the protected industry consists of chemical manufacturers. The victims are American citizens, many of them recalcitrant admirers of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt of the article by the Associated Press:
The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting non-scientists have a bigger – often secret – role, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.
The administration’s decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program’s credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.
At issue is the EPA’s screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.
How many people are dying out there because they have been exposed to common chemicals of which most people don’t know of the dangers? How many of those people are children? Every time I hear of another person getting cancer (especially when I hear of a young child getting cancer), I wonder whether it’s because he or she has been exposed too …
