Childhood under siege
Subtitle: how big business callously targets children
By: Joel Bakan
Publisher: Allen Lane Canada
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9780670069071
Subjects: Corporations; Moral and ethical aspects; Child consumers; Target marketing; Child welfare; Children; Health and hygiene; Societes; Aspect moral; Enfants consommateurs; Cibles (Marketing); Enfants; Protection, assistance; Sante et hygiene
Other titles: Childhood under siege :
Description: "Corporations have found a new resource to be mined for profit: our children. In this shocking and indelible behind-the-scenes journey, Joel Bakan, acclaimed author and award-winning maker of the renowned film and international bestselling book The Corporation, uncovers the astonishing degree to which companies exploit the special vulnerabilities of children, manipulate parents' fears, and operate with callous disregard for children's health and well-being.

The number of children taking dangerous psychotropic drugs has skyrocketed as pharmaceutical companies employ insidious, often illegal tactics to inflate diagnoses of disorders and convince parents their children require medication. A highly sophisticated marketing industry deploys increasingly subtle and powerful tactics to play on children's intense emotions and desires and to lure them into obsessive consumerism. Computer game designers craft techniques to titillate children with sex and violence, while social media developers infiltrate and shape children's social and emotional worlds to compel them to spend more and more monetizable time online. America's schools are being transformed into profit centers while children are subjected to increasingly regimented teaching that thwarts curiosity and creativity, numbing the joy of learning. And children's chronic health problems, from asthma to cancer, autism, and birth defects, steadily escalate as thousands of new industrial chemicals are dumped into their environments.

Childhood Under Siege leaves no room for doubt that this assault on childhood is a major crisis of our time. A powerful manifesto for urgent change, it empowers us to shield our own children while offering concrete and realistic proposals for legal reforms that would protect all children from these predatory practices."--Jacket.
Notes: Sur la couv.: Assoiffees de profits, de grandes entreprises ont trouve une nouvelle ressource a exploiter: NOS ENFANTS. Allons-nous les laisser faire?

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The century of the child; title: Whack your soul mate and boneless girl; title: The new curriculum of childhood; title: Prescriptions for profit; title: Pom-poms for pills; title: A dangerous and unnatural experiment; title: Precautionary tales; title: In our own backyard; title: Race to nowhere; title: Narrowing minds.