Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car.

Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children’s advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world.

Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children’s marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.

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Shopping malls have really become the centers of many communities. Children, as well as adults, see a shopping center as just the natural destination to fill a bored life. Through revealing personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, dramatized vignettes, and “anti-commercial” breaks, Affluenza examines the high cost of achieving the most extravagant lifestyle the world has ever seen. Last year, Americans, who make up only five percent of the world’s population, used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste.

Add overwork, personal stress, the erosion of family and community, skyrocketing debt, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and it’s easy to understand why some people say that the American Dream is no bargain. Many are opting out of the consumer chase, redefining the Dream, and making “voluntary simplicity” one of the top 10 trends of the ’90s. Affluenza travels across the country to show you men and women who are working and shopping less, spending more time with friends and family, volunteering in their communities, and enjoying their lives more.

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They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the “next big thing” that will snare the attention of their prey–a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year. They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts–and wallets–of America’s youth?

FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in “The Merchants of Cool.” Produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, the program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today’s teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.

Teenagers are the hottest consumer demographic in America. At 33 million strong, they comprise the largest generation of teens America has ever seen–larger, even, than the much-ballyhooed Baby Boom generation. Last year, America’s teens spent $100 billion, while influencing their parents’ spending to the tune of another $50 billion. (Excerpt from pbs.org)

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How and what we eat has radically changed over the past few decades with the all-consuming rise of the supermarket. But what price are we paying for the homogenized, cheap and convenient food that supermarkets specialize in? In a two-part programme, journalist Jane Moore investigates how supermarkets have affected the food on our plates and reveals the tell-tale signs that the food we buy may not have been grown in the way we think.

Using a combination of undercover filming and scientific analysis, Supermarket Secrets investigates whether the food on supermarket shelves is really as good as it looks, whether prices are as good as they seem and what happens behind the scenes in the production of supermarket food. (Excerpt from channel4.com)

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In the last 10 years, corporations have doubled what they spend marketing to your children. It’s no wonder. Children influence 62% of family purchases – everything from snack food to cameras to cars. Kids under twelve are at the epicentre of consumer culture.

There is gold in the hills, and marketers know your children will lead the way. So, they spend billions of dollars every year, on the premise that a tug of your heartstrings will mobilize your purse strings. And they’ve unleashed an army of market researchers to help them accomplish their mission. The kids have taken over.

It’s all been made possible through a dramatic shift in parenting style, which has parents dictating less and listening more, and ageneration of under twelve’s that is more numerous and more affluent than the Baby Boomers. This is a marketing culture where companies are moving far beyond traditional boundaries, coining terms like “the infant niche market” and “cradle-to-grave brand loyalty.” Psychologists and anti-marketers have been waving a red flag for years, and now they’re dressing for battle. Meet the players who have helped the kids take over. (Excerpt from cbc.ca)

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Religion aside for a moment, there’s a terrible addiction that has swept across this country, and it’s one of the nation’s best kept secrets. Mostly everyone will tell you that it’s a really bad thing, but nobody can seem to stop doing it. And it doesn’t come cheap, nearly sixty percent of us are in long term debt because of it. No, we’re not talking booze, drugs or overeating. It’s shopping. And over 15 million Americans may in fact be addicted to it.

Rob VanAlkemade’s ‘What Would Jesus Buy?’ is a rousing, irreverent and simultaneously sobering documentary about the year round destructive shopaholic obsession that spins into an out of control buying and spending orgy by the time Christmas rolls around. The movie follows performance activist Reverend Billy and his ragtag cross country caravan, The Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, to bring the voice of reason a few holiday seasons ago, to compulsive consumers everywhere. The intent of this countdown to Christmas is to save the holiday from what Reverend Billy has dubbed only slightly in jest, the Shopocalypse. Ironically, many of his group are injured when one of their buses collides on a highway with a truck rushing to deliver Christmas merchandise to stores. Meanwhile, the Reverend muses, ‘everyone in a car is driving to a television.

The What Would Jesus Buy? project is the brainchild of Morgan Spurlock, the same guy who in a less spiritual frame of mind, lost the junk food battle of the bulge against McDonald’s with his Academy Award nominated high calorie investigative doc, Super Size Me, and is now hitting the plexes with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden. The concerns of What Would Jesus Buy are broader than digestion issues, as Reverend Billy and entourage put out a wakeup call to mall junkies everywhere, exorcising the demons from assorted cash registers and credit cards as he urges consumers to return to a more authentic relationship with Christmas. (Excerpt from amazon.com)

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