On the Commercialisation of Children’s Lives

“One big thing I’ve recently finished is an assessment for the UK Government on ‘the impact of the commercial world on children’s wellbeing’. It’s a very polarised debate. You have a lot of people arguing very strongly that the commercial world – by which they primarily mean advertising and marketing – is a bad influence on children on multiple levels. And then you have the marketers insisting that they are very responsible, and that they’re following the rules. We found that there are a lot of claims about, for example advertising/marketing causing obesity or ‘materialistic’ attitudes, but not a lot of hard evidence to support them.

London-based David Buckingham’s research focuses on children’s and young people’s interactions with electronic media, and on media education. He has recently completed research projects on everyday uses of video production technology, the uses of digital media by migrant/refugee children across Europe, and young people’s responses to sexual content in the media.

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