Children are manipulated by advertising, and, more often than not, this manipulation is negative. Who is responsible—the parents, the companies, the advertisers? Designers are not exempt from this equation either because designers shape the course of advertising. This raises many interesting questions: should designers share responsibility for adolescent manipulation; is enough awareness raised concerning pressing issues like obesity in children under the age of 12; and what measures can we take as designers and parents to prevent the global epidemic of adolescent obesity?
As an aspiring designer and an ardent believer in the adverse affects of misguided advertising, I believe we as an industry need to stand up and take responsibility for our actions. If people are fat, and they are fat because they are eating unhealthy food, then we are responsible for making that unhealthy food appealing. How do you convince someone that eating a burger that comes out of a tube is not only healthy, but also tasty? Well we did, and now it is our job to figure out how to reverse this appalling trend.
The American Obesity Association (AOA) has estimated that 15.3% of children under the age of twelve are obese. Those figures have more than doubled for children over the last two decades and tripled for adolescents in the same time period. The rising epidemic of obesity has become a major public issue. The International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO) states that in 1980 one out of ten children were overweight. Today, it is an astounding one out of every four—a total of 155 million overweight kids of which 30 to 40 million are classified as obese. Complications of childhood obesity include type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, chronic inflammation and hyperinsulinemia. Childhood obesity is a difficult disease to cure; once children become obese, they are predisposed to obesity for the rest of their lives. Also, potential complications, especially cardiovascular disease, grow more serious with age. Compounding these detrimental physical effects are perhaps more detrimental psychological effects. How does a fat little girl or boy deal with the mental abuse in our image based society? Just imagine confronting all these life-long ailments and issues before even reaching the tender age of thirteen. As “the crisis in public health” unfolds, society points fingers while no one person will take responsibility for creating or perpetuating these problems; subsequently we create unhealthier people generation after generation.
The convenience driven assault began soon after WWII, but it was not until the 1970s that the negative physical effects on children became undeniable. In this time period, the marketing itself reached a point of critical mass. Children under the influence of television, junk food, marketing, and lack of parental guidance were powerless to resist the desire to get a free toy, or see a clown; parents were seduced by the ease and the price of fast food during a long working week; companies eagerly filled demand; and advertisers were doing their job by bridging this gap.
Perhaps the most harmful medium participating in this vicious cycle is television. TV is, literally, an obesity machine because of the eating habits it advocates and how much children are allowed to watch it. Television allows advertisers to walk right through the front door of a home and address children directly. The average American child watches 19 hours and 40 minutes of TV per week — more than a thousand hours each year. That means an annual exposure to thousands of commercials about junk and fast food. With many children the TV has substituted for a parent, nanny, or guardian. As a result, children receive less adult supervision; they stand vulnerable and open to corporate marketers intruding into their lives, instilling appetite for burgers, fries, chocolate shakes, soft drinks and other junk items. This is further compounded by celebrity endorsements. Icons like Britney Spears and Batman seemingly have Whoppers, Big Macs, 42oz colas and fries on a regular basis. They are shown eating these items dozens of times a day on commercials. Of course the reality is they don’t eat these items regularly, and a healthy diet along with strenuous exercise is why they are in such good shape. This message never reaches the child. Another harmful accomplice is the portion of the sizes. What used to be a large fry or drink in the 1950’s is now considered a child’s portion. In fact, popcorn was the forerunner of this trend; it was the first item to super size and offer free refills. The small, which used to be large, the Grande, the colossal, and the “Big Kids Meal” are all expanding kids’ waistlines because, after all, they don’t want to be labeled as little kids.
I propose to ban advertising to children under the age of twelve—it is simply coercive. Obesity in children is not only a domestic problem, but rampant globally, with the exception of Sweden, where this law is set in place. The governmental intervention is crucial because at that age children do not have the knowledge, sophistication, or maturity to evaluate the credibility of nutritional information they receive. Children are very imaginative—“make-believe” play constitutes an important part of growing-up; advertisers should not exploit the imaginative qualities of children. Products and content which are inappropriate for children should not be advertised or promoted directly to children.
As a grad designer I feel that designers have a social responsibility to educate children about the dangers of excessive weight and create an effective, appealing environment for this to take place in. Kids are smart and they love to show it off. If children know they are being manipulated he/she instinctively, albeit gradually, will respond. An example of a successful campaign built on this premise is the anti-smoking campaign. They stopped addressing parents about the issue, they stopped blaming tobacco companies (sort of) for the issue, and they started targeting ads directly to kids, no matter how young because, in the end, it was the kids who had to make the decision, so it was the kids that had to be informed. The media stopped shielding children from the taboo of “smoking”, which in reality made them more susceptible to the addiction, and gave children the hard facts dealing with the health risks of smoking in a scenario which pertains to them. This sounds too simple, but it works. When will we stop shielding children from the negative effects of sitting on the couch and eating trans-fats all day? Although many influences affect a child’s personal and social development, it remains the prime responsibility of the parents to provide guidance for children. Advertisers and designers should contribute to this parent-child relationship in a constructive manner. It is a parent’s responsibility to instill good eating habits in their children and to turn off TV, but an advertisers’ responsibility to make this lesson easier.
The shocking statistics predict that by the year 2050 the average life expectancy of Americans will decrease from seventy-eight years to seventy-three years due to obesity. I guess before children can deal with the issue (or even have the opportunity to) adults must. Maybe the problem is not the fat, unhealthy kids, but the fat, unhealthy examples adults provide them.
Anna Addison is a student at Portfolio Center. This essay is the eighth in a series by PC students who took part in Bryony’s long-distance Design Thinking class during the quarter of winter 2005.
It's important to remember that there is an advertiser for everything. To the reverse of McDonald's and company, we have a multi-billion dollar weight loss industry that thrives on all this talk of an obesity epidemic. You can't ride a NYC subway these days without seeing Anna Nicole prancing around about Trimspa. If advertising is a factor in our national eating disorders, its as much because of the Jenny Craigs as the Mickey Ds.
That said, I am growing tired of the refrain "As a designer, I feel a social responsibility to..." I don't believe being a designer burdens you with any more social responsibilities than anyone else. Nor does it make us more complicit in the ills of modern corporate society. I'm all for reducing or eliminating advertising to children, but that is a social and legislative movement that doesn't need designers any more than it needs writers and lawyers and doctors.
Now, I don't mean to step on anyone's social activist leanings. Quite the contrary. Just that I think it's ok to leave the hair shirt behind. We'd all be much better off if more people did something about society's ills and less people sat around feeling guilty about them.
On May.11.2005 at 10:35 AM