Should advertising aimed at young children be banned?

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Whether young children should be a legitimate audience for advertisers divides parents and marketers sharply. Having weighed both positions, I support a ban on advertising aimed at young children, while accepting that the boundary is harder to draw than campaigners usually admit. Those who defend the practice make a reasonable commercial argument. Companies selling children's products must be able to tell families that those products exist, and advertising revenue funds a great deal of the programming, games and websites that families use without paying. A blanket ban would push those costs back onto parents or remove the content altogether. The case for prohibition rests on a simple asymmetry. Persuasion assumes an audience capable of recognising that it is being persuaded, and below roughly eight years of age children do not reliably make that distinction, so an advertisement and a programme feel like the same thing. Advertising to an audience that cannot identify a sales message is not competing for attention but manipulating it. Sweden and Quebec have restricted such advertising for decades without their broadcasting industries collapsing. The practical difficulty is definition. Sponsored personalities, in-game purchases and branded characters now reach children far more effectively than a television slot, so a law written for one medium is obsolete almost immediately. A workable ban has to name the audience rather than the format. In conclusion, I agree with the campaigners. Children should be advertised to through their parents rather than around them, and any restriction worth passing must follow children onto the platforms where they actually spend their time.