This article does present an opposing view unlike the first source that I used. I do like how this article points out the parent’s responsibility to monitor what their children watch. I do not believe that advertising to children should be the fault of an advertising company. Parents should take an active role in monitoring and general parenting instead of actively voting for advertising bans in regard to their own children. Austin points a lot of good points to refute the statements made by Alissa Quart. Quart states that the generation of teens should be labeled “branded for life” because teens wear name brand clothing and are consumed by advertisements displaying popularity over morals. Austin refutes this statement by using the background of the popular cartoon-show “Daria.” Quart’s pessimistic views were no match for Austin because Austin easily used Quart’s very own tactics against her.
Radley Balko. "Banning Fast-Food Advertising Would Not Reduce Childhood Obesity." Current Controversies: Food. Ed. Jan Grover. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Community College Of Baltimore County.
15 Mar. 2009
I felt that this article is relevant to the book (Fast Food Nation) because it talks about the opposing views of banning fast food. This article states that there is “no correlation between ad exposure and childhood obesity.” I agree with this statement because children learn how and what to eat based on their environment. If a child experiences a surrounding where there is nothing but unhealthy foods/habits (not necessarily fast food), most likely that child will grow-up with a higher chance of childhood obesity, than a child that grew up with healthy foods/habits. This ad talks about how children watch less TV when compared to what children watched 15 years ago because of new technologies such as a remote control and TiVo. This article argues that banning food ads targeted towards children would not solve the problem because the children that are prone to obesity are more likely to watch adult shows. This whole scenario of unsupervised children goes back to the root of parents not parenting.
Roy F. Fox. "Advertising Is Harmful to Children." Opposing Viewpoints: Advertising. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Community College Of Baltimore County. 14 Mar. 2009http://0-find.galegroup.com.library.ccbcmd.edu:80/ovrc/infomark.do?&contentSet =GSRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T010&prodId=OVRC&docId=EJ3010388213&source=gale&srcprod=OVRC&userGroupName=balt47855&version=1.0.
This is a very informational source, even though I felt that it was a little biased. Roy Fox is an education professor at a university and he wrote a whole book about how harmful advertising is to children. Right from the beginning, I knew that this article would have the bulk of it’s content on refuting the ideas of advertising to children. Some of the interesting points were how the schools made deals with advertising and soda companies, with the full knowledge of it’s effects on children. One of the solutions to limiting the amount of advertising viewed by children, was to have “ad-free zones” during school hours. I also liked the analogy this article used to compare materialism to a religion. It talked about how the “Temple of a Nike ad” was the “place of worship” and how different sports’ balls would act as “halos for the corresponding sports God.”
I have experienced schools where soda and junk food were readily available to students at school. I came from an elementary school that did not allow children to drink sodas or eat junk food during the day. The rule was to eat it before or after school, but while you were in school you had to eat/drink what was on the lunch menu. Then I graduated to a middle school where you could basically do what you wanted to do. What a child ate or drank really wasn't the school's concern. My school was more focused on summer reading and test scores. I think I would've fallen into the junk food trap right along with my peers, nut they had one thing that I did not have, money. I am aware of schools making deals with a Coca Cola company to recieve some funding for school programs, books, supplies, etc. I don't really agree with the one source that I have because it talks about how it's not ethical for a school to allow an advertising agency to control/manipulate the minds of children. For a prinicpal of a school, it quickly boils down to dollars and cents when trying to generate funding for the school. Although it may not seem like a very wise option to constantly advertise to children, I am pretty confident in saying that children aren't as convincing as they may seem. Another thing is that it is not the schools or advertising companys' that are responsible for what a child consumes. Where the schools end in responsibility is where the parents are suppose to pick up. Instead of rearing in those morals and values, they would rather blame it on a scapegoat so that they won't have to take responsibility.
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