Google TV: Targeting Kids and other Intended Consequences

The introductory ad for Google TV is titled "Kids Again."

It has left out a word, "Targeting."

"Targeting Kids Again."

The very first line in the copy gets to the point: "We haven't been this excited about TV since Saturday morning cartoons."

Exactly.

Saturday morning cartoons are certainly something to get excited about. Captive, malleable minds. Endless advertising opportunities for sugary junk food and plastic trinkets.

Diabetes gets another boost among kids. We can be sure Big Pharma is really excited about Google TV.

Want to see health care costs soar?

How about violence without end. Think of all those new privatized, tax-supported prisons we can build when the new generation of Googled Kids move into being Googled felons.

Hey, Tea Party-ers, how about it? If you're so concerned about values, what do you say to an outfit like Google that is so "excited" about undermining the health and values of the next generation?

Right, right. It's all about the glories of the unregulated free market. Keep big government's mitts of this. Down with the "Nanny State"!

If kids want to spend hours in front of Google TV downing chips and cola rather than visiting parks to explore nature or playgrounds to shoot hoops and climb jungle gyms, it's their choice.

It certainly isn't their parents'. Moms (or, if you are lucky, Moms and Dads) are too busy trying to escape foreclosure, pay the rent and hold down minimum wage jobs.

So give the parents a break. Let them turn "parenting" over to Google TV and the "excitement" of a screen-centered childhood.

Thanks Google...for thinking inside the box. Again.

Finally, consider the ad's tag line. It's the really scary part: "The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don't even know what the coolest thing about it will be."

How cool is that? Not very.

Just think, more new technology without a clue as to what it will do. Brilliant.

Of course, Google knows exactly what the "coolest" thing will be about Google TV. Piles of money made at the expense of the next generation of kids.

Editor backs anti-junk food campaign

Marie Sherlock, the editor of Portland’s Metro-Parent magazine, understands the importance of teaching kids media literacy.

She has posted an astute entry on the magazine’s blog HERE.

It congratulates the Nutrition Council of Oregon for a recent campaign fighting junk food and the associated health hazards it poses to our children.

Here is one of the Council’s ads:


I was moved to respond to Marie’s post with this.

Great post.

My first thought is that children shouldn't be confronted with ads for junk food in the first place. Most of them are on children's TV programing. Others are in grocery stores in the form of "feel good" packaging. The products are often "tied-in" to TV programing and advertising.

The "help" we can give our children is to get rid of the TV. In the store, introduce children to nutrition labels and the false impression left by packaging and its commercial labels.

The only choices a child should have about food should come from responsible parents.

You are what you eat

I wanted to share this remarkable series of photos and statistics with you. Thanks to my friend Sara Levette for alerting me to them.

The saying, "Live simply that others can simply live" came to me while I was viewing them.

A related site is this one. Have fun and do good! Someone other than you can "eat" your words.

Do-nothing industry, TV marketing threaten diabetic kids

Time to connect media dots again.

My friend and colleague Jean Rystrom of Kaiser Permanente has alerted me to two media stories in the news this week. I haven’t seen them printed locally, so its off to the web to find them.

The first reports on a study that found that the more time a child with juvenile, or type 1, diabetes spends watching television, the more difficult it is for the child to control sugar intake and hence the disease itself.

Although the study didn't specifically gather evidence for it, part of the problem is the lack of physical activity resulting from sedentary television viewing. Another part is the advertising of sugary junk food on children’s TV.

And that brings us to the second story from Jean. This one reveals the hypocrisy of food companies who use TV to market junk food to kids. Two years ago, with considerable fanfare, the food industry announced it was cutting back on junk food TV advertising.

Not so, according to a recently released University of Arkansas study that found no appreciable reduction of such advertising since the proclamation.

In other words, once a scoundrel, always a scoundrel. The food folks are no different from their tobacco industry counterparts, and in some cases they are one in the same. For example, Altria, the former Philip Morris, makes Marlboro cigarettes, Oreo cookies and Jell-O.

Every angle of the problem of TV’s negative impact on our health needs to be addressed, but it seems to me that the least effective way to achieve change is to appeal to the conscience of an industry that demonstrably has no conscience.

No, we must change our own behavior and that of our children. When no one is watching its ads, the industry will be forced to change its ways.

On hold, waiting for "boycott" comment

I usually put up a post a day on The Red Electric, but I don't want to detract from the previous post or from my invitation for you to comment. (Stop gawking and write!)

My sources tell me that Portland Public Schools is still negotiating over Coca-Cola's demands, which are excessive in light of the terms of the district's Faustian contract with the giant beverage company.

One thing is for sure: whatever Coca-Cola gets out of this in dollars, it is going to lose several times over in bad publicity.

My "boycott donation" proposal (scroll down to yesterday's post) addresses the school district's financial need, and punishes Coke in the Portland marketplace.

A show of support for the idea by you and others could get Coke to soften its demands. Pass the word....

Let's make Coke pay for its pay-off

As the Portland School District hand-wrestles with the giant Coca-Cola Company behind closed doors, a few of us have been considering calling a boycott against dozens of Coca-Cola products.

Coke is trying to force its junk beverages back on our schools after agreeing to withdraw them. If the district doesn’t accept, Coke is threatening to sue to the tune of $600,000, the equivalent of the salaries of more than a dozen teachers.

When it comes to boycotting, Coke presents a big, exposed target. Visit the Coca-Cola brand list site to see just how exposed. The list includes Dannon Yoghurt, Odwalla and Minute Maid orange juice. Ever buy those?

There’s no doubt the school district botched its dealings with Coke, so the district needs to swallow its pride, pay off Coke and kick junk beverages out of our schools.

But then we, nearly 600,000 Portland consumers, need to step up and make Coca-Cola Company pay the price by targeted restraint in the supermarket. What we save by not buying Coca-Cola products—at least $600,000—we should donate immediately to an as-yet-to-be-established PPS "Junk-the-Junk-Food Fund."

To measure support for this idea, please comment below. Please indicate a willingness to contribute to the “Junk the Junk Food Fund.” You can pay up when the fund has been established.

Finally, alert others to this site and the chance to comment and pledge.