If your counter-argument is predicated on businesses freely exchanging with parents to convince them what products to feed their children, I fully agree that they should be free to do that, but that's distinct from advertising to children directly.
If your counter-argument is predicated on businesses freely exchanging with parents to convince them what products to feed their children, I fully agree that they should be free to do that, but that's distinct from advertising to children directly.
Parents who do not wish their children exposed to advertising could use the same rules they would use to prevent their children from being exposed to violent media and profanity.
I think the solution is for parents to simply start thinking of media portraying drug consumption and media portraying Twinkie consumption as logically equivalent, and for parents to stop paying for an information service to deliver them such media (television), and to demand the market provide a new information service which more adequately matches their preferences for media (a kid-oriented Netflix?).
This solution does not require a state to monitor and decode the nutritional value of information transfers.
There are many forms of advertisement which do not assert facts or even include language. An advertisement could simply consist of a graphical fictional portrayal of consumption or brand usage done in a glamorous light.
If something does not include a representation of facts, it does include a potential for fraud, and it would not make sense to regulate it as such solely on a principle of equivalence.
That's sort-of fine, again, when dealing with competent adults. Though plenty of research demonstrates that even competent adults are incapable of avoiding being influenced by good advertising in ways that may very well be against their own interests.
But when targeting children, it takes very little before your slight manipulation gets treated as if it was fact by young children. That it isn't "asserting something as fact" by adult standards is meaningless when discussing advertising that is targeting children.
And as a parent: Short of locking my child in the house with no access to any media, there is no way I can prevent my son from being exposed to advertising that he (at 4 years old) is in no way prepared to objectively assess the fact content of.
That doesn't fly. The nature of advertising is intrusive. I have to sign up for porn cable channel. I have no control about what goes on air on Discovery Kids at 10 PM between the shows. I can choose what magazine I buy. I can't choose which ads are printed between the articles. It goes on...
Dumb mass media advertising could die tomorrow. Every advertising should be like AdWords (query initiated suggestions curated by the channel, not nagging driven by the advertisers). Unfortunately we still have mass media since that's profitable for the agencies mafia, they still get away selling impressions/exposure, not real results.
But isn't it still up to the parents to decide what to buy?
There's a campaign in my country (Brazil) to ban/regulate all sorts of advertising to children, and I've heard some parents who support it claim (essentially) that they can't say "no" to their children. As someone who grew up in a lower-middle-class family and understood very early that I couldn't have all the toys, or even all the toys my slightly higher-middle-class classmates had, I find that trend rather bizarre.
Children can't consent. So the state has to protect them. One way to do that is by shielding them from things that hurt them.
It happens that junk food hurts them, and a lot of the reason why they eat junk food is because of television ads. Since they can't consent and the state must protect them, we ought to limit advertising unhealthy things to kids.
Or, ya know, their parents.
I'm sure 99.9% of parents, if properly educated, would agree that an overweight or obese child is a bad thing. They might not know what to do about it, and TV ads might turn out to be more powerful than parent's routine meal planning.
It might turn out that asking them to turn off the TV is impractical. Maybe telling them what to feed their kids is even worse. In terms of practical means to reduce obesity, most parents would not oppose limiting TV advertising to children.
Besides, the state is parents. No big deal.
While I'm for reducing the power of the state, protection of children is not something society can abdicate from without severe negative effects.
Sadly I don't think there is any way to come to any real, objective answer on this issue. It is one, IMO, that will cause conflict as long as there are people.
Is it really so much to ask that we be allowed to make our own decisions about food? Come on, we're talking about food! Not medicine. Not heavy machinery or automobiles or airplanes or nuclear energy. Food!
You don't have to accept the position of the documentary, that the corporate form is intrinsically a bad thing. But tell me that the marketers behind the "Nag Factor" report don't disgust you.
It is nice to imagine that each family is an island of rationality, well-informed about choices and their eventual effects, never choosing the easy path, immune to marketing and peer pressure. In the real world, things are a little more complex. And the marketers behind reports like "The Nag Factor" make millions by subverting family relations to serve their purposes.
It is good to be skeptical of regulation, but this is so clearly a case where more good can be done than harm.
I'm not talking about limiting anybody's decisions. I'm talking about regulating interactions between businesses and people who are incompetent to make their own decisions.
This is exactly what makes it so dangerous. Just food? Food is something that can be as deadly as drugs, yet is as accepted as air.
>Not medicine.
It's worse than medicine exactly for the sentiment you are expressing. No big deal right? It's so normal it couldn't possibly be abused, right? It's exactly the opposite. We can push poison and it's no big deal because it's "just food".
It's not about forcing people to make decisions. It's about deceiving people into make the wrong decisions for your own profit. That is not innocent business. That is fraud.