For the first time in modern history, our children's life expectancy could be lower than our own. The reason: obesity.
Every day our children are bombarded with advertisements -- quite often for products that are harmful to them. Each year, the average child sees about 40,000 commercials on television alone, the majority of ads targeted at them are for candy, sugared cereal, fizzy drinks and fast food.
While parents may actually be the ones paying the price for all of this advertising at the cash register, our children are paying with their health.
The role of marketing in the childhood obesity problem is significant. A recent study found that children who spend the most time watching TV, videos and video games are more likely to be overweight.
It is where food advertisers spend billions of euro's each year pushing unhealthy cereals, snacks and drinks through commercials and product placements aimed at children; where beloved cartoon characters chill for fast- food chains (such as Burger King's use of Teletubbies and SpongeBob); and where advertisements for cookies and candy are disguised as arcade-style games. It is where broadcasters and advertisers put their own financial well-being above the health of our children.
Interactive television also has the potential to target individual viewers with personalized ads, increasing the likelihood of impulse purchases, according to the Center for Digital Democracy. Advertisers will be able to target children according to their gender, age, household income and race, by tracking the history of their individual television viewing habits.
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