All across America today corporate marketers are reaching out with their pocketbooks to buy the children of America. Children have become agents of corporations in their own homes and are the victim of an epidemic of marketing-related diseases. As parents are bypassed by corporate marketers, most are unaware of what is happening in their own homes and in the schools their children attend. Those parents that are savvy to this aggressive commercial culture find themselves in a constant battle over the degradation of the values they hope to instill within their children. .
For the first time in human history, most children are born into homes where most of the stories do not come from the parents, schools, churches, communities, and in many places even from their native countries, but from a handful of conglomerates who have something to sell.
--George Gerbner .
Recent California Legislation failed to stop the sale of soda on school campuses. The Senate Education Committee defeated the bill by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, by a 6-1 vote. It needed eight votes to pass. If SB1520 had become law, California would have been the most populous state to start phasing out junk food in schools. The bill failed even though research shows that America's children are suffering from an increase in obesity, type 2 diabetes, anorexia and bulimia much of which is brought on by poor nutritional habits. Major producers of soft drinks are spending millions of dollars for the right to place soft drink vending machines on school campuses across the nation. Los Angeles County reported from this source average annual revenue of $39,000 per high school and $14,000 per middle school. .
Sexually suggestive advertising aimed at today's youth can be seen nightly on television. Teen magazines are filled with airbrushed models sporting unrealistic body images. Among the pages you find advertisements promising bigger breasts, lose fat in 14 days, or gain six-pack abs in two months.