A Campaign You Can Believe In
Whether or not you are enamored with either of the current Presidential candidates, we can all get behind a good cause that looks to protect kids - for real - and empower parents with the knowledge they need to negotiate our media saturated world.
In their own words:
Parents for Ethical Marketing is a young,
grassroots organization of people concerned
about the effects of corporate marketing
practices directed at young children.
PEM is a great site - IMHO - that combines a great blog, deep news archives, pages of resources for parents and a great cause. When it comes to marketing, Madison Avenue can be merciless. Although it’s still kind of gross, when marketers target adults we still have the power to make responsible, informed choices. Our kids - media savvy as they may be - are more-or-less defenseless. It’s not too much to draw a parallel from kid’s marketing to a group of jackals culling the weakest antelope from a herd, laughing and slobbering before they tear their prize to bloody pieces.
Is that overstating the case? Maybe you should read their blog…
Currently PEM is on a drive to raise $10,000 by Thanksgiving in order to keep their cyber-doors open as well as expand their efforts. Given the size of the figures we Americans have been staring down lately, a mere ten grand seems like a modest wish indeed.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Thank you so much for the very kinds words! I’ve just recently come across your site and have added you to my feed reader. Keep up the great work.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:19 am
[...] Thanks also to Joe Nolan at Teen Checkup for another wonderful [...]
October 18th, 2008 at 8:35 am
For a fun way for parents to jump-start a discussion about common sense internet and social networking safety, here’s a website that includes an instructional video and a very easy quiz.
http://www.auntlee.com/safety/
The video is a selection of silly clips supposedly posted to the MySpace pages of the famous auntlee.com puppy and some of her friends. The clips demonstrate mistakes kids can make online.
The 10 question quiz covers the topics of cyber-bullying, privacy, safety, dangers of spyware and malware, etc.
The quiz doesn’t really focus on stranger-danger type concerns but rather gently and humorously reminds the reader that it’s possible to hurt people’s feelings, to mislead people who don’t realize you’re joking, to remember that online postings can be seen by anybody and that postings are often impossible to remove once posted.