UK Government publishes report on the ‘Impact of the Commercial World on Children’s Wellbeing’

On 14 December, the Department for Children, Schools and Families published ‘The Impact of the Commercial World on Children’s Wellbeing, Report of an Independent Assessment for the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’. The report finds that “overall the commercial world is not going to disappear. Children and parents need to understand it and deal with it. Consumer and media literacy, both at home and in schools, offers one important strategy here, although it needs further evaluation.”

Among others, the report finds the following:

- “Children today are exposed to a growing number and range of commercial messages. These extend far beyond traditional media advertising, and involve activities such as online marketing, sponsorship and peer-to-peer marketing. Commercial forces also increasingly impact on children’s experiences in areas such as broadcasting, education and play.

- The commercial world offers children important opportunities in terms of entertainment, learning, creativity and cultural experience. But there are also significant concerns about what many see as harmful impacts on children’s wellbeing, especially on their mental and physical health.

- The debate on these issues is polarised and often sensationalised, making it hard to arrive at a balanced view. Commercialism needs to be understood in relation to broader changes in the economy and in family life, without succumbing to nostalgia for a mythical ‘golden age’. Simple cause-and-effect explanations do not do justice to the complexity of the issues.

- The evidence, both of risk and harm caused by the commercial world and of its benefits, is rarely conclusive. Overall, it suggests that children are neither the helpless victims imagined by some campaigners nor the autonomous ‘savvy’ consumers celebrated by some marketing people.

- There is some research that establishes associations between aspects of the commercial world and negative wellbeing among children. However, in most key areas relating to physical and mental health there is very limited evidence of any causal relationship. Few studies have clearly established the importance of commercial factors as compared with other influences, such as parents and peers.

- Equally, the commercial world may have a whole range of positive effects on children; but reliable evidence on specific impacts is very limited, and there is little or no independent evaluation of the claims of businesses in this respect.

- New media and marketing techniques raise some ethical concerns about potential deception and threats to privacy: the public is not currently well-informed about this area, and existing regulation is insufficient in some respects.

- Growing commercial pressures are undermining the production of UK-originated children’s television programmes.

- Schools and public spaces are increasingly being used as marketing venues and being affected by privatisation and commercialisation. The implications of these developments for children’s wellbeing remain to be identified.

- In these and other areas, commercialisation may accentuate inequalities and place further pressure on those who are already disadvantaged.”

With regard to advertising, the report makes the following policy recommendations:

- In the course of this assessment, there have been numerous calls for further restrictions on HFSS advertising on television prior to the 9 pm. watershed; while the Children’s Society Good Childhood report calls for a ban on advertising of any kind to children under the age of 12. While there are many factors that would need to be considered in such a move, there are four relevant points that emerge from our broader assessment of the evidence:

- It is not clear why the age of 12 has been chosen here – rather than, for example, 4 or 8 or 16. The evidence suggests that there is no ‘magic age’ at which children become somehow immune to the effects of advertising, or at least sufficiently capable of evaluating it.

- It would be practically very difficult to distinguish between advertising that is aimed at children and advertising to which they are likely to be exposed: indeed, the studies we have drawn on here appear to do this in rather different ways.

- Given the move away from television advertising to advertising in other media, the regulation of marketing materials that children might encounter without necessarily choosing to be exposed to them (such as billboards or direct marketing) would also need to be considered.

- As we have shown, advertising per se is only a small part of the wide range of promotional and marketing activities that are targeted at children. Banning advertising would be likely to result in a further increase in spending on these other activities.
- New media, new challenges. Furthermore, there are several new challenges now emerging that are potentially much more significant than television advertising. These relate partly to quite well-established practices such as sponsorship, and to areas such as marketing in schools and play spaces. However, they relate particularly to the new media and marketing techniques. Regulation needs to adapt to the changing realities of a converged, digital environment, in which marketers increasingly work across multiple platforms. We need to know more about how children (and indeed adults) understand and respond to the commercial dimensions of these practices; but they do potentially raise issues to do with ethics and privacy that need to be more systematically addressed within the regulatory system. Given the global nature of such activities, they also require an internationally coordinated response.

Source: Advertising Education Forum