

As Marketing to Children Intensifies, What Can Society Do?


About that App Gap: Children, Technology and the Digital Divide

Despite a wide-held belief that children from low-income families are deprived of access to technology, they actually spend more time with screens than wealthier children do. This screen time takes away valuable time from activities proven to be educational—negatively impacting vocabulary and reading skills, the ability to separate fact from hype, to think deeply, to be creative, to display empathy, and to demonstrate self-reflection.


Why children are interested in war play, and why educators are concerned. It is important to both reduce the amount of violence that children see, and help children find ways to work out the violence that they do see. Includes suggestions for addressing violent play—including promoting imagination and creative play and encouraging children to talk about media violence.


The more opportunities that children have to engage in creative play, the better they will become at mastering the academic and non-academic situations they later encounter. The time that children spend watching screens deprives them of time they could spend playing creatively and learning meaningfully. The article explores how we can help children construct knowledge today by encouraging creative play, limiting involvement with electronic media, and helping children find meaningful problems to solve.

Big Soda’s Publicity Stunt

The American Beverage Association (ABA) has been marketing a new responsible image; however, it has spent more money marketing this image than it has spent actually being responsible. The ABA has released a policy aimed at providing lower calorie and/or more nutritious beverages to schools—but the ABA does not directly contract schools, there is no enforcement or oversight mechanism, and the policy only applies to vending machines.

Calories for Sale

Childhood obesity rates are linked to food advertising. Because of the pervasive extent of child-centered food marketing, there is a need for more stringent government regulations. This article explores the depth of child-centered food marketing and offers grassroots strategies for instituting change.