A doctor is to recommend to a Parlaimentary committee in the UK restricting advertising to kids because of a possible adverse effect on health – full script below

I applaud all measures taken to protect children but I’m just not sure how this can be applied because the strongest inter-advertising with kids is word of mouth in the playground.

There have been many calls to restrict advertising, but to do this with children you have to turn off all media that they consume, it’s not just as simple as turning off TV adverts.

The solution in my mind still lies with the brand owners to do the right thing. Easier said than done!

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Press Assoc. - Advertising ‘affects kids’ health’

The effects of advertising on children should be treated by the Government as a public health issue, an expert is to say. 

Dr Aric Sigman will encourage the Government to give overall responsibility for policy relating to the commercial world and child wellbeing to the Department of Health, saying: “Commercial media affects the health of children and is therefore a public health issue.”Dr Sigman will tell the Children in the Commercial World conference at Westminster: “It seems that advertisers are labouring under the misapprehension that they have an assumed right to communicate with British children. Government and society must inform them otherwise.”

 He said children under the age of seven or eight were the most vulnerable, with advertising directed at this age group “inherently unhealthy”.

 He said: “While children will grow up in a commercial world and must learn to negotiate this, the question we must face is whether we prematurely aid and abet this process particularly in the under eight age group. As the information highway becomes wider, there have never been so many commercial influences ‘speaking’ freely to our children out of our earshot.

 ”It is imperative that we cordon off early childhood and provide children with a more commercial-free buffer zone until their critical faculties are more highly developed.”

 Dr Sigman will suggest that those who advertise to children should be given limited influence over future policy.

 He will say: “The views and concerns about child health versus the media’s rights should not be considered as equally valid perspectives. We find ourselves in the extraordinary situation whereby those who market to children are those who advise on government policy toward child-wellbeing. 

 ”While this conflict of interest may exist in other areas of policy formation, child welfare is a unique area which must not be compromised by commercial vested interests. As in any other area of child health, those who wish to sell things to children should not be in a position to decide or advise Governments on what is in children’s best interests, nor on how much advertising children should see, nor should they regulate themselves.”