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“The impact of commercial media
on the health behavior
of children and adolescents”
Dr Abdul-Halim Joukhadar
Regional Advisor/ Health Promotion & Education
Division of Health Protection and Promotion
W H O Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office –Cairo
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Globalization, Media and Mass-communication
• Media and mass communication, along with
globalization, are :
– playing an ever-increasing role in contemporary
life, shaping our modern culture.
– influencing lifestyles and consumption patterns
worldwide.
– promoting the homogenization of values and
lifestyles among younger generations.
– Mass media are to a great extent fueled by
commercial enterprises which have as their goals
influencing individuals' purchasing decisions.
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Values, lifestyles and global
marketing
• Values and lifestyles play a central role in
the global marketing.
• Multi-national corporations track and
respond to shifts in the needs, wants,
and lifestyles of their target consumers
through
– Psychometric research
– Lifestyle research
– Brand image research
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African Football Cup Cairo January 2006
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Standardized global marketing=
pooling huger resources for marketing
• Multi-national companies have adopted
standardized global marketing, creating
central advertising production banks and
guidelines for brand images and promotions,
with regionally appropriate advertisements.
• This led to pooling huge budget resources
for marketing research and advertisement
• More aggressive advertising to achieve
greater penetration of new markets where
regulatory environment is loose or
nonexistent.
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Exploiting children’s limited cognitive ability
to understand commercial persuasion
• The heavy marketing directed towards young
people ,especially young children, is driven
largely by the desire to build and develop
brand awareness and recognition, brand
preference and brand loyalty.
• Heavy marketing directed to children is
exploitative: young children do not yet
possess the cognitive ability to comprehend
the persuasive intent of advertising
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Use of psychological expertise
to market products to young children
• An upsurge in the use of psychological
knowledge and research:
– to more effectively market products to
young children to persuade them to want
advertised products
– to influence parents’ purchasing
decisions (Pester power).
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Unfair practices undermining parental authority
• Parental authority is undermined by wide
discrepancies between what parents tell their
children is healthful to eat and what the food
and beverage marketing promotes as
desirable to eat.
• Many parents have limited proficiency in
nutrition, while food companies have
extensive expertise in persuasive
techniques, and huge resources to influence
children’s food choices such as cartoon
characters, contests, celebrities, and toy
give-away.
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Manipulating developmental concerns
• Teens want to identify with their peer group and
this represents a vulnerability factor.
(Adolescence Vol. 33, No. 131). The attraction to
prestige brands develops in adolescent years
because it's a time when peer pressure and
fitting-in are very important.
• Adolescents still can be persuaded by the
emotive messages of advertising, which play
into their developmental concerns related to
appearance, self-identity, belonging, and
sexuality.
• Marketers manipulate Teen's desire to be
"cool," to sell their wares, a concept that's been
offered to marketers by psychologists.
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Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children
• Aggressive attitudes and behaviors are learned by
imitating observed models: children learn by observing,
imitating, and making behaviors their own.
• Although exposure to media violence is not the sole
factor contributing to aggression, antisocial attitudes, and
violence among children and adolescents, it is an
important health risk factor
• Over 1000 studies conducted by leading public health
figures point overwhelmingly to a causal connection
between media violence and aggressive behavior in some
children (Congressional Public Health Summit July 2000)
• Over 30 years of research, point out that viewing
entertainment violence can lead to increases in
aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in
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Entertainment violence increases
propulsion to violence
• Children exposed to violence are more likely
to assume that acts of violence are
acceptable behavior.
 Entertainment violence feeds a perception
that the world is a violent and mean place.
 Prolonged viewing of media violence can
lead to emotional desensitization toward
violence in real life. Happy slapping and
teacher bating are but examples.
 Viewing violence increases fear of becoming
a victim of violence, leads to self-protective
behaviors and a mistrust of others.
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Video games and violence
• Video games that portray violence are an ideal
environment in which to learn violence:
– They place the player in the role of the aggressor
– Reward him or her for successful violent
behavior.
– Allow the player to rehearse an entire behavioral
script, from provocation, to choosing to respond
violently, to resolution of the conflict.
– Video games have been found to be addictive:
children and adolescents want to play them for
long periods of time to improve their scores and
advance to higher levels. Repetition increases
their effect.
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SOCIAL IMPACT OF MUSIC VIOLENCE
• In a testimony to the Senate the American Academy
of Pediatrics pointed out that during the past four
decades, rock music lyrics have become
increasingly explicit -- particularly with reference to
drugs, sex , violence and even of greater concern,
sexual violence.
• With the advent of Music TV channels, violent lyrics
with sexual connotations, violence, sexism, drugoriented, or antisocial behavior are transmitted ,
including scenes that degrade women,
• A handful of experimental studies indicate that
music videos may have a significant behavioral
impact by desensitizing violence and by making
teenagers more likely to approve of premarital sex.
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Body image dissatisfaction and advertising
• Thinness has not only come to represent
attractiveness, and to symbolize success,
self-control and higher socioeconomic
status. The average size of idealized women
(as portrayed by super models), has become
progressively thinner at 13-19% below physically
expected weight.
• Researchers suggest that this thin ideal is
unachievable for most women and is likely to
lead to feelings of self-devaluation, feelings
of depression and helplessness. Body image
dissatisfaction and eating disorders are
more prevalent among females than males.
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GSHS JORDAN 2004
Risk of Overweight among adolescents 13-15 years
60
Males
40
Females
20
0
17.5 / 11.1
At Risk
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18.8 / 27.3
22.7 /42.2
Perception Try losing
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Impact of Food Marketing to Children
• The Institute of Medicine of the US National
Academies released in December 2005 a report
entitled" Food Marketing to Children and
Youth: Threat or Opportunity?” The main
findings of the report are the following:
a) There is strong evidence that television
advertising of foods and beverages has a
direct influence on what children choose
to eat. Food advertising on television can
make children crave junk food.
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Impact of Food Marketing to Children
b) The dominant focus of food and
beverage marketing to children and youth
is for products high in calories and low in
nutrients, and this is sharply out of
balance with healthy diets.
c) Marketing approaches have become
multi-faceted and sophisticated, moving
far beyond television advertising to
include the Internet, advergames, strategic
product placement, and much more.
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Impact of Food Marketing to Children
d) Turning around the current trends in
children's diets and in marketing will
require strong and active leadership and
cooperation, from both the public and
private sectors. Industry resources and
creativity must be harnessed on behalf of
healthier diets for children.
These findings are equally valid elsewhere
in the world due the increasing influence
of globalization and market economy
under the ever growing influence of multinational companies.
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Unhealthy diet and overweight are risk factors
• The world health report 2002 describes in
detail how, in most countries, a few major risk
factors account for much of the morbidity and
mortality, and for non-communicable diseases;
five of these global risk factors are closely
related to diet and physical activity.
• Food marketing has been one of the areas of
focus of the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical
Activity and Health, adopted by the 57th
World Health Assembly in May 2004.
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Regulatory environment of marketing food to children
• WHO conducted a review in 71 countries on the regulatory
environment and identified gaps, specifically in four main areas:
– Existing regulations do not recognize food as a
category in need of special consideration from a public
health standpoint.
– There are many differences in the regulatory
environment between countries and also wide
variations in the degree of enforcement.
– While there are plenty of ethically-based guidelines, there
are fewer specific restrictions on the timing, content
and form of marketing campaigns targeted at children.
– Non-traditional forms of advertising targeted at
children such as marketing in schools, sponsorship,
Internet-based techniques and sales promotions are less
regulated than television advertising to children.
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Obesity and chronic disease risk
• Food advertisements targeted to children through
multiple media channels contribute to children’s
choices about foods, beverages, and sedentary
pursuits and may have a strong influence on their
tendency toward increased obesity and chronic
disease risk.
• Childhood obesity involves significant risks to
physical and emotional health. Overweight or obese
teens are increasingly at risk for type-2 diabetes, once
called "adult-onset" diabetes and once rare in kids.
• Obesity prevention involves addressing the factors
that influence both eating and physical activity.
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Percentage of persons 20 years or older who are overweight
or obese in selected EMR States ( Stepwise S. System)
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Country
Males
Females
Egypt 2005
Iran 2005
Iraq 2006
Jordan 2005
Kuwait 2006
Lebanon 2002
Saudi Arabia 2005
Syria 2004
60.0
37.0
63.6
65.5
78.0
60.0
64.0
52.9
72.2
48.5
69.6
77.0
81.7
53.0
70.0
58.8
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Percentage of students 13-15 years who spent 3 hours or more
during a typical day watching TV, playing computer games,
chatting with friends or were engaged in other sedentary activities
50
40
30
20
10
0
41.840.5
Jor2004
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32.235.3
Mor2006
Oma2005
Boys
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Girls
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42.6
38.4
UAE2005
Percentage of students 13-15 years at risk of
overweight or who are overweight )GSHS data)
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30
20
33.9 32.5
23.2
20.8
14.1
12.8
Jor2004
Leb2005
10
0
Boys
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Girls
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UAE2005
The Global Strategy on Diet, Physical
Activity and Health
• The Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health
provides a comprehensive framework for addressing child and
adolescent overweight risk factors and identifies 4 strategic areas for
action:
(a) Education, communication and public awareness:
Appropriate public knowledge on the relationship
between physical activity, diet and health, on energy
intake and output, on diets and patterns of physical
activity that lower the risk of non-communicable
diseases, and on healthy choices of food items
provides a basis of good policy;
(b) Marketing, advertising, sponsorship and promotion:
Food and beverage advertisements should not exploit
children’s inexperience or credulity. Messages that
encourage unhealthy dietary practices or physical inactivity
should be discouraged, and positive, healthy messages
encouraged.
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The Global Strategy on Diet, Physical
Activity and Health
(c) Labelling: Consumers have the right to accurate,
standardized and comprehensible information on
the content of food items so that it is conducive to
making healthy choices. Governments may
require information on key nutritional aspects, as
proposed in the Codex Alimentarius Guidelines
on Nutrition Labelling.
(d) Health claims: As consumers’ interest in health
grows, producers increasingly use health-related
messages. Such messages must not mislead the
public about nutritional benefits or risks.
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WHA Resolution 60.23 (May2007)
• The Sixtieth World Health Assembly (WHA60.23) requested the
Director General to take the necessary actions to promote initiatives
aimed at implementing the global strategy on the prevention of noncommunicable diseases with the purpose of
– increasing the availability of healthy food, and promoting
healthy diets and healthy eating habits,
– promoting responsible marketing including the
development of a set of recommendations on marketing of
foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children, in order to
reduce the impact of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty
acids, free sugars or salt in dialogue with all relevant
stakeholders, including private sector parties
– building and sustaining contact with the mass media in
order to ensure continued prominence in the media of the
issues related to the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.
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Media literacy , regulatory responses
and parent responsibility
• The health sector should play a leadership role in
advocating for comprehensive preventive actions, and
regulatory responses promoting healthy diets and
physical activity among children and young people. Heath
should be put in its rightful place at the centre of further
policy development concerning the marketing of food to
children.
• The educational system should develop appropriate life
skills based preventive responses, such as media
literacy education, to counter balance the adverse impact
of commercial media on the health of children and
adolescents.
• Parents should be encouraged and empowered to
assume their responsibility and contribute actively to
reverse the situation through pressuring the food industry
to take corrective actions.
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•The food and beverage industry , as did
the Tobacco industry , will continue to
argue that advertising does not influence
the dietary behavior of children and young
people, then why are they spending billions
of dollars on advertisement to promote
products of low quality nutrition?
•Neither multi-nationals are stupid to spend
such colossal amounts on publicity, nor are
consumers stupid to believe them !!!
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