Linking Social Media Advertising To Childhood Obesity

Is there any connection between social media advertising and childhood obesity? The answer is yes.

1. Introduction

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Since 1980, obesity in the Western world has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years (2015). Childhood obesity has been becoming an escalating problem around the world that is especially detrimental as its effects carry on into adulthood. This is an important issue because obesity leads to other health problems in children such as juvenile diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and more. Advertising of food and the sedentary lifestyle today’s children have come to know contribute to rates of childhood obesity by influencing parents’ purchasing/food decisions, encouraging a reduced amount of physical activity, and the implication that exposure to this advertisement is correlated with increased screen time that not only contributes to these other two points but offers evidence of the sedentary lifestyle watching these advertisements.

2. With the media advertisement popularize, some people start to buy products following advertising advice. In terms of childhood who doesn’t have clearly and correct choice ability, food advertising has big impact for child choice and eating habits so that also influence with childhood obesity.

“It is no coincidence that the parts of the world highest in childhood obesity are those that are also the most capitalist-based economies, and the increasing rate of obesity in places like China, whose recent economic reforms resemble capitalism more than ever, seems to support this correlation (Wang et al 2007)”. This hinted correlation must be identified and substantiated before there can be an identification of how precisely increased advertisement exposure and screen time correlates with childhood obesity. The correlation begins with empirical evidence. For instance, there is a strong connection with screen time and exposure to advertisements specifically targeting children for foodstuffs. Scully et al (2015) offer after investigation of empirical break-downs of types of food advertised during children’s high-volume watching hours that “these results demonstrate that food and beverages depicted in advertisements during children’s programming are predominantly unhealthy foods with high salt and sugar contents,” hinting at the correlation between high salt-and-sugar contents and childhood obesity (p 207). Besides, this correlation also being mimicked in the developing world only serves to support the thesis of the connection because it offers that obesity didn’t increase in countries like China and Taiwan until after capitalism, McDonaldization, and globalization impacted cultures to be more like the West. This increase can clearly be linked to the “McDonaldization” of culture which encourages eating, advertising and sales practices like that of the West.

3. Speaking of sociological impacts of globalization, in addition to the empirical evidence of the effect increased exposure to food advertising has on children’s eating habits are more sociological impacts.

Ken W Brown

While it is unrealistic to argue that one single factor causes childhood obesity, the argument that advertising may contribute to a sedentary lifestyle or that the sedentary lifestyle encourages access to advertising, which in turn increases childhood obesity, both all under the above-offered thesis. In short, there is a causal relationship between advertising and food choice for children, as evidenced above. However whether that relationship is between advertising and food choice or television/screen time and sedentary lifestyle isn’t necessarily a mutually exclusive question. A good example of this counter-argument is the proof that Michelle Obama’s First Lady of the United States’ “Get Moving” campaign. This campaign encourages children to “get moving” with national days of fun, getting outside advertisements, and increasing pressure on schools to focus on physical movement and exercise, etc.

4. On the other hand, it is hard to say that food advertisement is directly reason cause childhood obesity, the real question is no longer whether food advertising causes childhood obesity, but rather how much.

A recent study shows that US children aged 2–11 years see an average of 11.5 min of food-related TV advertising per day (Powell et al). One another study shows that the base case model predicts that reducing the exposure to TV food advertising of US children from 80.5 min/week9 to zero would decrease total consumption by 4.5%. If every 10% reduction in consumption corresponds to a 4.5% lower body weight, children would weigh about 2.1% less than in the current situation, on average (Lennert et al). Therefore, in the other words, as long as control the time of children cost on advertising, it may reduce the advertising influence for childhood obesity.

5. Conclusion

In closing, there are both empirical and sociological arguments that offer a correlation between advertising to children about food and childhood obesity rates. In addition to these there are combining theories of both advertising and reduced screen time in general, which do not negate the argument of advertising’s correlation with childhood obesity, only supporting the argument through additional decreasing of exposure to food advertisements for children with such activities as the “Get Moving” campaign from First Lady Obama and other non-screen-time efforts of late. In the case of children, one justification for government intervention is that society as a whole may reap substantial current and future production and consumption benefits from improvements in children’s health so the government should monitor the advertising publish. In addition, parents as role models for their children “own preferences about what, when, where to eat and what to do or not do while eating should not be ignored as important influences on family meal patterns and behaviors of health outcomes of youths” (Lytle et al., 2010, pg. 360). The best way that avoid food advertisement bad influence for children obesity is that the parent models as good eating habits.