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Advertising to kids
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Anybody else think that companies like McDonalds should be banned from promoting unhealthy foods to kids via bribing them with toys or bright and happy adverts?
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In an ideal world adverstisers would be banned from manipulating children, full stop, but big companies will never allow that to happen.
However kids can be persuasive little buggers. Hmmm.
the thing is ...why do people need to eat so god damned much anyway? i usualy manage to wait till i get home. saves time ...saves money ...saves health and no parking problems.
It's okay banning advertising from McDonalds but children will still eat some very unhealthy food at school or at home.
So what's the point?
McDonalds go far deeper than just advertising I'm afraid. As hack Nick Cohen has reported, the evil clown has started 'sponsoring' schools in Britain- something that it's been doing in the US for a while- and giving them educational books and grants.
All very well you might think. It's only when you examine the books that you realise some nursery rhymes have been 'updated' and now have the odd suggestion to visit McDonalds added to their lyrics. Other books have good old Ronald the clown splattered all over them.
Talk about brainwashing! :mad:
a better idea, i think, would be to teach kids about advertising, and say that yes, ronald's very colourful and funny, but his food isn't very good for you. and it's ok to go sometimes, as a treat, but fast food shouldn't be part of your diet.
if you ban advertising for small children, then as soon as the child is old enough to be exposed to it, they will be all 'who is this mystical ronald creature and his magical foodstuffs? i must experiment'.
life is full of tempations, and we can't ban them all. better parenting, i think, is the answer.
but instead of putting it in black and white its the duty of parents to educate their kids to not get brainwashed by adverts, parents not taking repsonsiblities, my mum only ever got me McDees as a treat occasionally and made sure i knew it was only a treat
They should put fat ginger kids on the adverts instead.
You don't have kids, do you?
If you do, I would love to find out how you get that message across to a five year old...
and my parents brought me up in that way. the only times i remember going to macdonalds as a kid it was for someone's birthday (you know those shit parties they used to have in the 80s), and i remember knowing that it was just for a treat.
you can teach kids anything if you find something they can relate to.
My friends kid knew the Macdonalds sign by the age of 2 and all because she taught him that he'd get a burger if he was good.
Rant over... apologies for sidetracking.
Personally, I go for the "no" approach. I don't have to justify it to my children.
I would agree that we cannot blame the whole situation n advertising, and parent are responsible for much of what their children ingest. I do, however, feel that the advertising puts an increased pressure on them and that it is morally reprehensible for advertisers to target children in such a way. It's hard enough to be a parent without having to fight adverts too...
ah, no no... i wasn't suggesting you detail all the ins and outs to them, just something along the lines of 'yes, mcdonalds have a funky clown and they give out toys, but the food is bad'.
if you do that hand-in-hand with the 'no you can't have it approach', then, in my experience, it works.
only instead of saying 'you can't have fast food because i say so' which is guaranteed to cause a tantrum of the 'it's not fair' variety, try 'you can't have fast food because it's not good for you and i don't want you to be poorly'.
Tantrums in my house were not tolerated. It was a nice day you weren't sent out to play, forget about vegging in front of the TV all day. Also I cannot remember one kid at my primary school who got driven to school and it was pretty rare at my secondary.