Consumer Kids was launched at the Museum of Childhood on 29th January and all of the books were sold out before 7.30.
We have already had requests from Australia and USA for copies of the book (available from Amazon from anywhere).
The extensive press coverage of the book has demonstrated how polarised the debate on children and the commercial world is.
Commentators either want to wrap children up in cotton wool and protect them from evil marketers or to reassure us that the kids are totally in control and, if anything, are smarter than the corporations marketing to them.
The point of writing Consumer Kids was to try to move this debate into the difficult ground between these two enemy camps. It’s easy to rant about corporations and it’s comfortable to believe that our kids are completely savvy. It’s much more of a challenge to disentangle where corporations need to review their policies and practices and where kids do need help and protection.
Getting the balance right between treating our kids as consumers on the one hand and citizens on the other is a major challenge for to-day. We’ll only get that balance if corporations, marketing and advertising agencies, regulators, NGOs and the academics doing the research on the evidence get together. There hasn’t been enough of this so far.
Let’s hope the book can bring some of the parties together to sort out what’s working well for our children and what is failing them.
