Advertising Toll On Children In America

1509 Words7 Pages
Advertising and Media’s Toll on Children in America Did you know that childhood obesity is growing at an alarming rate in the United States? All over the world, we hear terrible and heart wrenching stories of children starving and eventually dying an early death because of malnourishment. The U.S. is also experiencing serious health problems with young children caused by the opposite reason from the children in these third world countries. The children in America are becoming grossly and dangerously overweight. In the period from 1963 to 1970, four percent of children aged six to eleven years and five percent of adolescents aged twelve to nineteen were defined as being overweight. By 1999, the percentage of children who were overweight had more than tripled reaching thirteen percent. The rise was even more for adolescents where the incidence of overweight has nearly tripled in the same period, reaching fourteen percent (Centers for Disease Control, 2001). There are many contributing factors to this alarming trend of childhood obesity in America, and among the most prevalent is advertising and modern media. Children today spend an average of five and a half hours a day using media, the equivalent of a full-time job, and more time than they spend doing anything else besides sleeping. Even the youngest children, preschoolers ages six and under, spend as much time with screened media (TV, videos, video games and computers) as they do playing outside. Much of the media targeted to children is laden with elaborate advertising campaigns, many of which promote foods such as candy, soda, and snacks. Indeed, it isestimated that the typical child sees about 40,000 ads a year on TV alone. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004) Childhood obesity is at an all-time high and it will only get worse if something does not change. It leads to school bullying and mockery,
Open Document