Propaganda

Lets face it, the days of Saturday morning cartoons are honestly long gone. Today these kids can watch any cartoon show as well as other children’s programming on a variety of channels anytime they turn on their TV. On March 5th of last year, Scott Morefield wrote an article which he titled “ How services like Netflix (in moderation) could help parents break the junk food propaganda stranglehold.” Scott states that these parents would do well in his opinion if they were able to keep a close eye on not only what and how much their kids are watching, but even better the content of the commercials given during these episodes. The kids today are exposed to all types of commercials. We see it all the time; junk food and beverage companies are spending a lot of money poisoning  us with their advertisements.

But now several major food manufacturers including McDonalds, has agreed to promote healthier choices with half of their child directed advertising. It’s incredible the exposure to fast food in TV ads that were are seeing. Morefield shared some very interesting information in his article... “McDonalds alone spent $898.1 million on advertising in 2009. That year, the average 2-5 year-old child saw 309 McDonalds ads, almost 3 per day.” Scott mentions that as a result , 40 percent of the parents said their children ask them to go to McDonalds. The interesting question here is did these parents give in?

I think propaganda should be illegal in a way because it ultimately comes down to all lies. If one can get in trouble for lying why can’t those who influence others while knowing they will be harmed? It just does not make any sense to me. Morefield’s primary focus was to write an article which discussed how to raise healthy kids despite a system and status quoa that makes it as difficult as possible. He named a few alternatives towards the bottom of his article which I thought were quite interesting and accurate. He says it’s the parent’s responsibility to become educated on the issues of fast food and decide what exactly their children consume.

Far too many parents , I see give in to their kids to avoid tantrums and to make them happy but in the long run it doesn’t benefit anyone. I know it’s extremely convenient when a family is out and about to just drive up to McDonalds and order off of the menu. The more these kids watch the McDonald’s ads the more they will want it and eventually parents will give in. What should be done is opt for DVDs or streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix where parents can keep better track of what their kids watch.