Advertising to Children

I know this is a few weeks old but when we were talking about advertising to kids we watched a short clip that was about two minutes long. In my Social Ethics class we just watched that entire film which happens to be a lot longer than two minutes. After seeing it, it got me thinking again about our class opinion on the film. The general consensus at the time seemed to be that the fault needed to be laid at the feet of the parents. It is their kid, they need to be responsible for them. In the full-length version of the film, they bring up some points I felt were valid. One of them was that a parent can't control what advertising their child is exposed at school anymore. I think about this and I feel the video is right, I mean, we're a long way from just having the "Got Milk?" posters. And once they get older, the child will spend less time with their parents. Out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night, advertising can bombard them without the parents present to shield them. While I don't think you can take all responsibility away from parents, (they need to be able to say no) if kids are away from them and with their own money advertising can influence them in a negative way. But I think the most important thing to take away from the video is that Pop Culture is awesome because we only had to watch two minutes of the film rather than take a whole class period for it.