Educate your kids about advertising and how marketers target young people

• Help kids understand that the main goal of advertising is to make them buy things—often things they don't need, and didn't even know they wanted until they've seen the ad.
  
  
• Explain that advertising is big business, one of the largest businesses in the world.
  
  
• Using the Advertising Strategies handout (right sidebar), talk about the techniques marketers use to target kids.
  
  
• Using the Rules For Advertising To Kids (right sidebar), discuss what advertisers are not allowed to do when making ads for kids. Examine commercials and print ads to see if they follow the rules.
  
  
• Using the Talking to Kids About Advertising tip sheet (right sidebar), start to integrate media literacy questions into the conversations you have with your kids about advertising.

Challenge your children's definition of "cool"

Ask them the following questions:

• Do you ever feel bad about yourself for not owning something?
  
  
• Have you ever felt that people might like you more if you owned a certain item?
  
  
• Has an ad made you feel that you would like yourself more, or that others would like you more, if you owned the product the ad is selling?
  
  
• Do you ever worry about your looks? Have you ever felt that people would like you more if your face, body, skin or hair looked different?
  
  
• Has an ad ever made you feel that you would like yourself more, or others would like you more, if you changed your appearance with the product the ad was selling?

(Source: The Price of Happiness teaching lesson)

Encourage savvy consumer habits

• Encourage your kids to challenge advertisers' claims about their products. Do your own blind taste tests at home or buy a product and compare its performance with the claims made in the commercial.
  
  
• Introduce your kids to Street Cents—the award-winning CBC consumer show for kids. The show tests consumer products and puts "truth in advertising” to the test each week.
  
  
• The PBS Don't Buy It! Web site teaches kids to be smart about advertising and marketing. Visit the site with your kids and go through some of the interactive activities together.
  
  
• The Center for a New American Dream has a fun, interactive Web site for kids. The I Buy Different site examines consumerism and gives tips for ethical buying.

Encourage your family to watch non-commercial television

• Young children should watch mostly non-commercial television.
  
  
• When watching commercial stations, tape programs so that you can fast forward through the commercials.

Explain the effects of mass consumerism on the planet and society

• Talk about the effects of consumption on the planet, and how the world's resources are distributed very unevenly among the world's people.
  
  
• Make gifts whenever possible.
  
  
• Donate money, goods or time to environmental causes.
  
  
• Celebrate Buy Nothing Day in your home. Use it as a catalyst to talk about why we often buy things we don't need, and how we can become smarter consumers and better savers.

Encourage non-commercial values in your kids

• Try to spend more time with your kids, not more money on them. What kids really want and need is time with their parents, not more consumer goods.
  
  
• Explain that there are children, even in your own community, who don't have many toys. Donate your old toys to a local women's shelter, or send them to a aid agency so they can shipped to refugee camps in developing countries.

Put shopping into perspective

• Explain that shopping should not be viewed as a hobby or pastime. It's something we do when we need to buy something and then we come home.
  
  
• Get your kids involved in other activities, so they have less time to hang around the mall.

Promote positive examples of advertising

• Draw their attention to fashion or food ads that promote positive body images.
  
  
• Visit the Web site About-Face, which feature examples of advertisements that promote positive images of women and children.