outside the (toy) box

Last week, the news media gave decent coverage to an important story that revealed the power of marketing to children. The study, in case you missed it (which is easy to do if you have children!) showed that McDonald’s marketing was so effective that in experimental taste tests, children believed that food in a McDonald’s wrapper tasted better than identical food in a plain wrapper. This was even true for things not traditionally associated with McDonald’s, like apple juice, carrots and milk. This is an advertising coup d’etat — brand loyalty deeply ingrained by preschool. It is also a disturbing reminder of the impact on advertising on very young children, who do not understand the difference between advertising and programming, and who are certainly not in a position to begin to understand that McDonald’s food may not be in their best interest.

The Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby video story seemed to get a bit less attention. This study, conducted by Zimmerman and Christakis at U of Washington showed that there is no evidence that these videos are educational as the products claim, and in fact may inhibit language development in infants. Here’s Time magazine’s brief story:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1650352,00.html

The reason I think this is worth making a big deal about, isn’t to make the many parents who enjoy showing these to their children feel guilty or worry, but because both video lines are marketed as educational, which is misrepresentation. There is already a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Baby Einstein, that was filed over a year ago by the Coalition for a Commercial Free Childhood, citing the deceptive advertising. You can see a copy of the complaint here,as well as the evidence:

http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/babyvideos/ftccomplaint.htm

Given the marketing of the products, parents are caught in a confusing array of messages. The American Academy of Pediatrics tells parents to avoid all screen time for children under two, but then there are Baby Einstein and Baby Mozart videos on the shelves (and arriving in gift bags from friends and family) that suggest that they will advantage your child. If and when to use videos is a personal parental choice, but parents deserve to be informed and marketing these videos as educational without evidence is unseemly, and if they take away from more meaningful experiences, and potentially inhibit educational development, it’s unethical.

If you want to tell Disney to stop the false advertising, you can do so in about 30 seconds through the CCFC web form:

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