Advertising is omnipresent. There are billboards on the highway, to advertise products to people as they hurtle down highways at seventy miles per hour. There are ads in newspapers, and magazines, that break up the content you just paid to read. Radio is inundated with ads, as is the internet. YouTube videos have ads tailored to your preferences and history, of varying length. And of course, broadcast and cable television have enough ad breaks to barely fit a twenty-two-minute sitcom into a thirty-minute timeslot. Ads are nearly inescapable, and they’re becoming increasingly smart as companies like Facebook and Google base their entire business model on selling the information of their users to advertisers. This raises some interesting questions. How effective is advertising? How accurate is the information that advertisers have? Are such invasive and high levels of advertising safe? American children exposed to television advertisements early in life have an overall higher BMI, altered eating habits, and are more sedentary compared to their peers. 

A lot is written about the obesity epidemic. In between ads for Coca Cola and McDonalds, local news anchors around the country are all asking the same questions. Are school lunches the source of the obesity crisis? Is it high fructose corn syrup? Some ponder if perhaps videogames are the problem. Today, nearly one in three American children are overweight. Children that are obese have a 75% to 80% chance of remaining obese into adulthood. Overweight children have a 40% chance of remaining overweight into adulthood (Dietz and Gortmaker). The effects of being overweight or obese as a child have effects that last a lifetime, and can often be cross generational. The time to break the cycle of obesity is in early childhood, when healthy habits can be imprinted effectively. It is important to remember that there is no single cause of childhood obesity, but contributing factors can be examined. A major contributing factor to childhood obesity is corporate advertising and marketing.

Advertising is a major component of most food companies. The food industry spends over $1.6 billion dollars every year, solely in marketing products towards children. This practice is called targeted advertising. Much like how Google tracks your browsing habits and tailors YouTube ads for maximum effect (and revenue), advertisers on channels like Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel use a variety of tactics to maximize the effect each ad has on its audience. Fast food companies like Burger King and McDonalds often try to grab the attention of children by tying in their children’s meals with popular movies and television properties. This tactic is well known, and terrifyingly effective. When Disney’s Frozen (2013) was promoted by a line of Happy Meal toys featuring Elsa, Anna, and Olaf, sales went up 20% month over month, due to the popularity of the movie. Unfortunately, McDonald’s Happy Meals are considered nutritionally poor, with high levels of fat, sugar, and sodium, not to mention the high levels of calories themselves. The toys are more of a motivator than the fattening food itself. A study done by the Canadian Board of Public Health found that children would overwhelmingly choose the healthier Happy Meal, such as one with apples slices instead of fries, or milk instead of soda, if the toy was only included with that healthier meal. These large companies are not forcing this healthy choice on their audience, but instead tricking them into making poor nutritional choices for a cheap toy. 

Another strategy often used by advertisers targeting children is to use celebrities to promote their products. Stars such as Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato are featured in ad campaigns for Coca Cola, Skittles, and Doritos. These stars have huge fan bases, and many of their fans are young children. To make things worse, these companies exploit the relationship between these stars and their young fans by advertising on children’s networks specifically.

In perhaps the most insidious advertising strategy, many companies will pay for product placement directly in children’s television shows. This technique is so effective because many young children cannot even distinguish between ads and actual television content. Children between the ages of zero and two cannot tell the difference between ads and television shows. Between the ages of three and six, children can identify ads, but they cannot identify that these ads are trying to sell them something. They take the claims made in advertisements at face value, and see them primarily as helpful or entertaining. It takes until the age of fourteen years before a child will begin to approach any ad or claims made in ads with skepticism. Product placement is used to skirt around legislation that limits the number of ads in a given hour, and it is less noticed by younger children than traditional ad breaks. 

With the number of advanced advertising techniques available to corporations today, it’s no wonder each individual ad is so effective. That makes the pure volume of ads a child is exposed to each day absolutely stunning. In an average week, a child will spend 24.6 hours watching television. When asked to choose between spending time with their fathers, and watching television, 54% of children between the ages of four to six chose to watch television. In a year, a child will watch 1,200 hours of television. They will see 16,000 thirty second ads in this time. To compare, the average child will also spend 900 hours in school during this time. The amount of television being watched by the average child is huge.

There is a strong correlation between the number of ads watched, and the average BMI in children. Children spend more time with media than in any other activity except for sleeping, on average more than seven hours a day. Many studies support a correlation between a decrease in physical activity as screen time increases. Children and teenagers who use a lot of media tend to be more sedentary in general. Physical activity, decreasing media time, and improving nutritional practices have been shown to prevent the onset of obesity, if not decrease existing obesity as well. The presence of a television in a child's bedroom seems to exacerbate the impact of that television viewing on children's weight status. A study of 2,343 children aged 9 to 12 years revealed that having a television in their bedroom was a significant risk factor for obesity, independent of physical activity. A cross-sectional study of 2,761 parents with young children in New York found that 40% of children under five had a bedroom TV, and those who did were more likely to be overweight or obese (Teotonio). Teenagers with a bedroom TV spent more time watching TV, less time being physically active, ate fewer family meals, had greater consumption of sweetened beverages, and ate fewer vegetables than did teenagers without a bedroom TV (Halford).
