Television: The Evil Children’s Media Platform
The long-standing proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child" has never been more accurate. Raising a child places immense demands on a parent’s time and resources, resulting in many parents utilizing television as a cheap quasi-babysitter. One of the consequences of this practice is that the television has gradually replaced a village’s role in a child’s upbringing. When a village raises a child, it has a child’s best interests at heart because one day that child will be a healthy adult, able to contribute back to the village. When parents allow television to fill the role of a village, they indirectly expose their child to advertising specially designed to manipulate impressionable young …show more content…
Over a period of 3.5 hours of television viewing, children watch an average of between 10.9 and 12.7 food-related advertisements depending upon their age (Powell et al.). The World Health Organization attributes food advertising aimed at children as a contributing factor in childhood obesity and calls for “a strong public health and policy imperative to act:”
Efforts must be made to ensure that children everywhere are protected against the impact of such marketing and given the opportunity to grow and develop in an enabling food environment — one that fosters and encourages healthy dietary choices and promotes the maintenance of healthy weight.
The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that a child over the age of 8 spends upwards of 8 hours per day interacting with various media, this exposure increases with age and when they have access to television in their bedroom, a situation parents are warned to avoid. Not only is this more time than a child spends in school but over the course of this viewing day, an average 8 year old would see 25 to 30 food-related advertisements with 86% of these advertisements promoting “food high in saturated fat, sugar or sodium” (Powell et …show more content…
A common concern raised is that banning advertising of this type would be government overreach and an encroachment on an advertiser’s freedom of speech. However, history has shown that governments do have the legal authority to introduce legislation aimed at restricting advertising for the unanimous good of their citizens. The cases of the quack medicine and tobacco industries are two historical examples where judges have overwhelmingly sided with the public interest in backing legislation like this when the affected industries subsequently challenge it in court. Another tactic used by opponents is the use of bias within the media to shift public option (Barry et al.). It is important to remember that media conglomerates often own both news media outlets reporting on the topic and children’s networks that benefit from the advertising revenues: a clear-cut conflict of interest. Despite childhood obesity rates tripling in recent decades, recently the news media have lost interest in covering the facts. Instead, a review of the content in the stories going to air found “Television news was more likely than other news sources to focus on behavior change as a solution….” A media conglomerate’s use of this tactic is not coincidental, as “research results indicate that Americans are less likely to support public
The long-standing proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child" has never been more accurate. Raising a child places immense demands on a parent’s time and resources, resulting in many parents utilizing television as a cheap quasi-babysitter. One of the consequences of this practice is that the television has gradually replaced a village’s role in a child’s upbringing. When a village raises a child, it has a child’s best interests at heart because one day that child will be a healthy adult, able to contribute back to the village. When parents allow television to fill the role of a village, they indirectly expose their child to advertising specially designed to manipulate impressionable young …show more content…
Over a period of 3.5 hours of television viewing, children watch an average of between 10.9 and 12.7 food-related advertisements depending upon their age (Powell et al.). The World Health Organization attributes food advertising aimed at children as a contributing factor in childhood obesity and calls for “a strong public health and policy imperative to act:”
Efforts must be made to ensure that children everywhere are protected against the impact of such marketing and given the opportunity to grow and develop in an enabling food environment — one that fosters and encourages healthy dietary choices and promotes the maintenance of healthy weight.
The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that a child over the age of 8 spends upwards of 8 hours per day interacting with various media, this exposure increases with age and when they have access to television in their bedroom, a situation parents are warned to avoid. Not only is this more time than a child spends in school but over the course of this viewing day, an average 8 year old would see 25 to 30 food-related advertisements with 86% of these advertisements promoting “food high in saturated fat, sugar or sodium” (Powell et …show more content…
A common concern raised is that banning advertising of this type would be government overreach and an encroachment on an advertiser’s freedom of speech. However, history has shown that governments do have the legal authority to introduce legislation aimed at restricting advertising for the unanimous good of their citizens. The cases of the quack medicine and tobacco industries are two historical examples where judges have overwhelmingly sided with the public interest in backing legislation like this when the affected industries subsequently challenge it in court. Another tactic used by opponents is the use of bias within the media to shift public option (Barry et al.). It is important to remember that media conglomerates often own both news media outlets reporting on the topic and children’s networks that benefit from the advertising revenues: a clear-cut conflict of interest. Despite childhood obesity rates tripling in recent decades, recently the news media have lost interest in covering the facts. Instead, a review of the content in the stories going to air found “Television news was more likely than other news sources to focus on behavior change as a solution….” A media conglomerate’s use of this tactic is not coincidental, as “research results indicate that Americans are less likely to support public