Commercialization and Kids and the WWW

The Children's Advertising Review Unit: 1997 Self Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising

The Children's Advertising Review Unit(CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, establishing in 1974 promotes responsible children's advertising through the publicantion voluntary guildelines. This 1997 guide includes guidellines for Interactive Electronic Media (e.g. Internet and Online Services)

Kids For Sale

Some large companies have created websites directed at children that manipulate them to divulge personal information the company then uses for direct marketing purposes. Supplies further reading resources:

Hittin' the Books

Cover Concepts Marketing Services in Braintree, Mass. started in 1989 by giving away free textbook covers with ads from corporations such as McDonalds's and Nike, to public schools. With brand recall at 74% they reach about half the school kids in the United States.

Web of Deception: Threats to Children from Online Marketing

A detailed summary of a report for the Center for Media Education on the issue of online marketing to children.

Online Advertising Targeting Children

articles on children's privacy and guidlines subbmitted by the CME to the Federal Trade Commission. Detailed reports on alcohol and tobacco advertising directed at children. A Kid's Guide to Internet Privacy.

Guidelines for Online Marketing to Children

Another set of guidelines submitted to the FTC also links to an article by Kathryn Montgomery "Children in the Digital Age."

Center for Democracy and Technology

FTC's plans to develop regulatory guidelines for the online collection and use of childrens' information.

Children in the Digital Age

Interests of children were central to the debate for the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The little attention paid to children was misdirected at indecent content on the Internet, and ignored critical issues that will have a significant long-term effect. Presents a good discussion of problems and an agenda for reform including three key goals:
ensuring universal access: Every child, regardless of income, should have access to the advanced communications technologies and services necessary for their education and full participation in society
developing safeguards-influence the design of new interactive services with effective government and oversight and enforcement
create a noncommercial children's civic sector-public spaces in the electronic environment where children will be able to play and learn without being subject to advertising, manipulation, or exploitation.

Electronic Privacy and Information Center

The Chidlren's Privacy Protection and Parental Empowerment Act. Also discusses the resale of information collected through online surveys.

The Children's Partnership

"The Children's Partnership is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to inform leaders and the public about the needs of America's 70 million children, and to engage them in ways that benefit children. The Partnership undertakes research and policy analysis, publishes reports and multimedia materials, and forges new alliances among parents, policymakers and the private sector to achieve tangible gains for children. The Partnership focuses particular attention on identifying new trends and emerging issues that will affect large numbers of America's children and on providing early analysis and strategies for action. In this way, it functions as a research and development (R&D) arm for the children's movement. The Children's Partnership's work is supported by private foundations, corporations, the entertainment community, interested individuals and others with whom it partners on projects."

The Center for Media Education

This extensive site focusing on "Online Advertising Targeting Children" has links focusing on many issues: Advertising practices with exacerbate the use of alcohol and tobacco use among youth; Internet, privacy and children including privacy guidelines to govern the collection and tracing of information from children on the Internet; Children's Online Privacy Protection Act passed by Congress on October 21, 1998--full text and discussion; Channel One Online; and, Mountain Dew's beeper campaign alert. Reports and Factsheets for consumers to use when campaigning against unfair and deceptive advertising to children on the WWW.

Center For Media Education/"And Now a Web From Our Sponsor"

How Online Advertisers are Cashing In On Children
1/3 of the estimated 15 million current web sites are corporate cyber-homes--the WWW gradually being transormed into a new marketing tool.
Nearly 3.7 million children under 18 have Web access and that number will quadruple by year 2000. The corporate world has not overlooked the potential for increased advertising revenues from kids, threatening to undermine the potential social, educational and cultural benefits
No limits exist on number and length of ads giving marketers the power to connect directly with children, bypassing the traditional parental and structural intermediaries to develop a new kind of commercial relationship with children
Whole sites where advertising IS content: Nabisco Neighborhood, Oscar Mayer Cyber Cinema, Colgate Kid's World, PowerRangers.
Collection of information: children asked to fill out on line forms often under the guise of a contest-- "We're a year or two away from database management to let us make use of information to tailor a site to the profile of a person visiting, or get clickstream data to see where we should put pointers."
Children are going to learn from online. It's a real and powerful responsibility to "do it right" to limit abuses through carefully considered policies.

Center for Media Education

Tract from the Center for Media Education "The Deceiving Web of Online Advertising" urging parents, policy makers, children's advocates, and industry leaders to work together to establish guidelines for advertising to children. A call to the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation of online advertising and to establish policies to protect children.

Web of Deception: Threats to Children from Online Marketing

Created by the Center for Media Education this site explores an investigation concluding that there are "threats in online marketing of violation of privacy and exploitation of children computer users."
The intereactive nature of online networks gives them the potential to become the most important medium for children-- real-time audio, real-time video, Shockwave and Java, VRML all are described. Ad agencies, cultural anthropologists, psychologists and researchers study how children use this new media, finding that when children go online, they enter the "flow state" that "highly pleasurable experience of total absorption in a challenging activity" that make it a perfect vehicle for advertising to children. Marketing and advertising that are potentially harmful are grouped into two categories: 1) invasion of children's privacy through solicitation of detailed personal information and tracking of online computer use; and 2) exploitation of vulnerable young computer users through new manipulative forms of advertising. Also lists five principles to guide development of online commercial children's services.

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998

Basic rights of chidren under 13 and their parents concerning the collection of personal information from children under 13 on World Wide Web Sites.

Jefferson County, Colorado

School district policies and procedures concerning commercialism in its schools.

Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-free Schools

An organization formed to abolish commercialism in the Seattle Public School including changing School Board policy on advertising in schools and adopting the "Milwaukee Principles for Corporate Involvement in the Schools."

STAY FREE Issue #13

"Having products that are designed for kids is a good thing, no question. It's the stealth baggage that comes with them that's the problem, and that's we're concerned with here: ads disguised as education, toys and entertainments not made as ends in themselves but to sell other products, and misleading commercials." This site has many articles dealing with these issues.

Should Standards Exist on Internet Advertising Targeted at Children?

"In 1995, children and teens spent $160 billion of their parents'money.Large companies have targeted children's buying power through various forms of media such as magazines, radio, and especially TV. Companies now have a new way to "get to" today's children...the Internet. 3.8 million children have access of going "on line" and are seeing many new advertisements with "prizes" and "contests" in exchange for personal information. The internet is unlike any other form of media in that there is no government or any other type of regulation to prevent the creation of potentially exploiting advertisements. Here, a debate arises...." Cynthia J. McKim addresses the dabate on standards with specific examples:

Editorial Standards for Web Advertising

A well supported plea to Search Engines: Consider children and set higher standards. "Any company providing a service that children need to navigate the Web and use for school work (e.g. search engines like Lycos) should not carry ads with sexual or violent content, nor ads linked to sites with sexual or violent material. In fact, it was an inappropriate Redbook ad that inspired this proposal."

Nabisco Neighborhood

A cartoon world with first hand interactive experiences in an advertisement targeted at children.

Self Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising

Another Better Business Bureau resource "explaining the six basic principles that underlie the Children's Advertising Review Unit's guidelines for advertising directed to children." Also, reasons why companies should practice self-regulation when targeting children.