RESOURCES: Review - Hey, advertisers, leave those kids alone

Reviewed by Howard Williamson, senior research associate at the school of social sciences, Cardiff University.

God, this is scary stuff! It brought to mind, first, all that advocacy for young people's autonomy and self-determination. But what chance do they have against the cunning, subtle and sometimes downright ruthless powers of the advertising world? And, second, I thought about all those contradictions between the hopes of public policy and the incessant seduction of rampant marketing: child protection versus the sexualisation of children; healthy lifestyles versus desirable body images; combating anti-social behaviour versus the lads' magazines. The list is endless.

Yes, this book really does expose the "dark side of teen marketing". It is about the corrosive alignment of money-spinning ventures with initiatives that are purportedly about doing something very different. The sponsorship of learning and citizenship activities by commercial interests, which detect the financial potential of a valuable and vulnerable teenage market, is a case in point. Kids take a first step, then a first word, and then a first French fry, proclaims a recent McDonald's ad.