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" It&amp;#039;s no secret: Marketers target kids, not only when they&amp;#039;re selling toys, movies, and breakfast cereals, but restaurants, vacations, and health and beauty products as well. And it&amp;#039;s smart of them: Even though 71 percent of parents say that they feel the recession pinch, 90 percent are willing to spend less on themselves so they can spend more on their children, according to the Winter 2010 Cassandra Report (which details youth consumer trends). And with the abundance of advertising (not to mention the peer pressure to have the &amp;quot;coolest&amp;quot; stuff), it&amp;#039;s almost impossible to raise kids who don&amp;#039;t get caught up in the material world, particularly as they get older and more insistent about what they (think they) want\u2014and even have their own money to buy it. That&amp;#039;s why the Federal Trade Commission just launched a new program to teach children ages 8 to 12 to be more advertising savvy. The website admongo.gov uses a nifty little video game to give kids an &amp;quot;ad-ucation&amp;quot;\u2014teaching them how and where to spot advertisements and what they mean. Kids navigate an avatar through a digital world filled with ads for similar-to-real-life products such as Cleanology Skin Care, Tender Teddy Orphans toys, and the American Audition TV show. At the end, kids make their own ad to test what they&amp;#039;ve learned. An in-school component, sponsored by Scholastic, is also in the works. While this program is certainly useful, parental influence is still most effective. How do you teach your kids to be critical consumers? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a23089/quiet-the-gimmes/>