CHICAGO – Inappropriate advertising contributes to many children’s illnesses, from obesity to anorexia, to drinking booze and having sex too soon, and Congress should crack down on it, the American Academy of Pediatrics says.
The influential doctors’ group issued a new policy statement in response to what it calls a rising tide of advertising aimed at children. The policy appears in December’s issue of Pediatrics, scheduled for release today.
“Young people view more than 40,000 ads per year on television alone and increasingly are being exposed to advertising on the Internet, in magazines, and in schools,” the policy says.
Advertising examples cited in the statement include TV commercials for sugary breakfast cereals and high-calorie snacks shown during children’s programs, and ads for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs shown during televised sports games.
The statement also is critical of alcohol ads that feature cartoonish animal characters; fast-food ads on educational TV shown in schools; magazine ads with stick-thin models; and toy and other product tie-ins between popular movie characters and fast-food restaurants.
These pervasive ads influence kids to demand poor food choices and to think drinking is cool, sex is a recreational activity and anorexia is fashionable, the academy says.
Interactive digital TV, expected to arrive in a few years, will spread the problem, allowing kids to click on-screen links to Web-based promotions, the new policy says.
In response, the academy says doctors should ask Congress and federal agencies to:
* Ban junk-food ads during shows geared toward young children.
* Limit commercial advertising to no more than six minutes per hour, a decrease of 50 percent.
* Restrict alcohol ads to showing only the product, not cartoon characters or attractive young women.
* Prohibit interactive advertising to children on digital TV.
The academy also says TV ads for erectile dysfunction drugs should be shown only after 10 p.m.
Advertising aimed at children has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, particularly because of data showing that about 17 percent of U.S. children are obese.
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