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STATE OF TH E WOR LDTransforming Cultures

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From Consumerism to Sustainability

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W. W. NORTONNEW YORK • LONDON

STATE OF THE WORLD

Advance Praise for State of the World 2010:

“If we continue to think of ourselves mostly asconsumers, it’s going to be very hard to bring ourenvironmental troubles under control. But it’s alsogoing to be very hard to live the rounded and joyfullives that could be ours. This is a subversive volumein all the best ways!”

—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy andThe End of Nature

“Worldwatch has taken on an ambitious agenda inthis volume. No generation in history has achieved acultural transformation as sweeping as the one calledfor here…it is hard not to be impressed with thebook’s boldness.”

—Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank

“This year’s State of the World report is a culturalmindbomb exploding with devastating force. I hopeit wakes a few people up.”

—Kalle Lasn, Editor of Adbusters magazine

Like a tsunami, consumerism has engulfed humancultures and Earth’s ecosystems. Left unaddressed, werisk global disaster. But if we channel this wave, intention-ally transforming our cultures to center on sustainability,we will not only prevent catastrophe but may usher in anera of sustainability—one that allows all people to thrivewhile protecting, even restoring, Earth.

In this year’s State of the World report, 50+ renownedresearchers and practitioners describe how we canharness the world’s leading institutions—education, themedia, business, governments, traditions, and socialmovements—to reorient cultures toward sustainability.

Transforming Cultures

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Transforming CulturesFrom Consumerism to SustainabilityFrom Consumerism to Sustainability

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Several million pounds of plasticenter the world’s oceans every hour,portrayed on the cover by the 2.4million bits of plastic that make upGyre, Chris Jordan’s 8- by 11-footreincarnation of the famous 1820swoodblock print, The Great WaveOff Kanagawa, by the Japanese artistKatsushika Hokusai.

For discussion questions,additional essays,

video presentations,and event calendar, visitblogs.worldwatch.org/transformingcultures.

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Cover image: Gyre by Chris JordanCover design: Lyle Rosbotham

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Marketing is linked to a host of public healthand social problems facing children today. TheWorld Health Organization and other publichealth institutions identify marketing to chil-dren as a significant factor in the worldwide epi-demic of childhood obesity. In addition,advertising and marketing have been associatedwith eating disorders, sexualization, youth vio-lence, family stress, and underage alcohol andtobacco use.1

Among the most troubling ramificationsof allowing marketers unfettered access to chil-dren is the erosion of creative play, which iscentral to healthy development. The com-mercial forces that are preventing the devel-opment of children’s natural capacity for playare daunting. But there is a burgeoning move-ment to reclaim childhood from corporatemarketers and a resurgence of interest in pro-tecting and promoting hands-on, unstruc-tured, child-driven “make-believe.”2

Why Play Matters

Play is both culturally universal and funda-mental to children’s well-being—factors thatled the United Nations to list it as a guaran-teed right in its 1989 Convention on the

Rights of the Child. Play is critical to healthydevelopment, and ensuring children’s right toplay is an essential building block toward asustainable world. Yet in the twenty-first cen-tury, hands-on creative play is an endangeredspecies. Perhaps the most insidious and pow-erful threat to what is every child’s birthrightis the escalation of commercialism in youngpeople’s lives.3

The ability to play creatively is central to thehuman capacity to experiment, to act ratherthan react, and to differentiate oneself from theenvironment. It is how children wrestle withlife and make it meaningful. Spirituality andadvances in science and art are all rooted inplay. Play promotes attributes essential to ademocratic populace, such as curiosity, rea-soning, empathy, sharing, cooperation, and asense of competence—a belief that the indi-vidual can make a difference in the world.Constructive problem-solving, divergent think-ing, and the capacity for self-regulation are alldeveloped through creative play.4

Children at play may enthusiastically conjurecookies out of thin air or talk with creatures noone else can see, yet they still remain groundedin the “real” world. Once children developthe capacity for simultaneously recognizing

62 WWW.WORLDWATCH.ORG

Commercialism in Children’s Lives

Susan Linn

Susan Linn is with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Harvard Medical School.

an object for what it is and what it could be,they are able to alter the world around themto further their dreams and hopes and to con-quer their fears. When children are given thetime and opportunity, they turn spontaneouslyto “pretend play” to make sense of their expe-rience, to cope with adversity, and to try outand rehearse new roles. They also develop thecapacity to use pretend play as a tool forhealing, self-knowledge, and growth.

It is traditionally assumed that whenchildren have leisure time, they areengaged in some kind of self-directed,or “free,” play, the motivation for whichgenerates from within, rather than fromexternal forces. But for the first time inhistory, that is not the case. Between1997 and 2002, in just five years, theamount of time that six- to eight-year-old children in the United States spentin pretend play—such as dress up orplay based on imaginative transforma-tions—diminished by about a third.More than half of parents in Japan andFrance characterize shopping as a playactivity. An international survey of 16countries found that only 27 percent ofchildren engaged in imaginative play, and only15 percent of mothers believed that play wasessential to children’s health.5

Babies are born with an innate capacity toplay. When commercial interests dominate aculture, however, nurturing creative play canbecome countercultural: it is a threat to cor-porate profits. Children who play creativelyare not as dependent on consumer goods forhaving fun. Their playfulness, as well as theircapacity for joy and engagement, rests mainlywithin themselves and what they bring to theworld rather than what the world brings tothem. They are active rather than reactive, andthey do not need to be constantly entertained.

Children who engage readily in make-believe are masters of transformation. Theycan conjure something out of nothing and

readily turn a mere stick into, for instance, awand, a sword, the mast of a boat, or a tool fordrawing in the sand. Their enjoyment doesnot depend on the novelty of acquisition butrather on what they can make of their envi-ronment. They are thus more likely to have theinternal resources to resist messages that pushthem toward excessive consumption.

There have been no longitudinal studiesexploring the long-term ramifications of chil-dren deprived of creative play. But a survey of400 major employers across the United Statesfound that many of their new young employ-ees, whose childhoods have been shaped byintensifying commercialization, lacked criticalthinking and basic problem-solving skills, aswell as creativity and innovation, all of whichare nurtured in creative play.6

The Rise of Commercialism

The fervor for government deregulation thatbegan in the United States in the 1980s, incombination with the digital revolution, hasresulted in an unprecedented escalation of com-mercialism in the lives of children. In 1983,

BLOGS.WORLDWATCH.ORG/TRANSFORMINGCULTURES 63

STATE OF THE WORLD 2010 Commercialism in Children’s Lives

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U.S. marketers spent some $100 million tar-geting children, a paltry sum compared with the$17 billion they are spending today. Whilemuch of the impetus for marketing to chil-dren originates in the United States, the trendis promulgated worldwide by multinationalcorporations. (See Table 7.) Food companiesalone spend about $1.9 billion annually mar-keting directly to children around the world.7

Commercial entertainment generated inthe United States has long been one of thecountry’s most profitable exports. MickeyMouse was recognizable around the worldlong before the escalation of advertising andmarketing to children in the 1980s. But thecombination of globalization, sophisticatedmedia technology, and U.S. anti-regulatorypolicies has made the world’s children more ofa target than ever before. Technologicaladvances such as video and DVDs, as well ascable and satellite television stations, increasemarketers’ access to children. With the Inter-net and video games now accessible on MP3players and cell phones, the pathways to chil-dren are increasing.

The mere introduction of electronic screenmedia into a culture can profoundly influencesocietal norms such as standards of beauty,diet, and interpersonal interactions. A classicstudy showed the rise of eating disorders

among women in Fiji after television was intro-duced to the island in 1995. The introductionof specific programming also has an effect. In1994, just after World Wrestling Entertain-ment television programming came to Israel,social scientists documented what theydescribed as an epidemic of schoolyard injuriescaused by children imitating wrestling moves.8

The two companies that dominate the worldtoy industry, Hasbro and Mattel, create filmsand television programs to promote their prod-ucts worldwide. In 2009, Hasbro announcedplans to form its own U.S. children’s cabletelevision station in partnership with the Dis-covery Channel, featuring popular brands suchas Tonka and My Little Pony. In a recent inter-national study of children’s leisure activities,researchers expressed surprise at how little dif-ferentiation there now is in how childrenaround the world spend their leisure time.9

Critics of globalization characterize thecommercialization of childhood as a powerfulvehicle for inculcating capitalist values in veryyoung children. The underlying message ofnearly all marketing, regardless of the productbeing advertised, is that the things people buywill make them happy. Aside from the factthat research on happiness shows this to befalse, immersing children in a message thatmaterial goods are essential to self-fulfillment


Commercialism in Children’s Lives STATE OF THE WORLD 2010

Disney English In China, parents pay $1,000 per semester to send children to Disney-themed lan-Language guage programs. Some children reportedly learn as few as four words, yet their effortsProgram are rewarded with Disney trinkets and access to government-banned Disney films.

McDonald’s As McDonald’s expands its presence in India, increasing numbers of children areHappy Meals sampling toys from films such as Ice Age Three and Madagascar with their chicken

burgers and French fries.

SpongeBob A “live” version of the most popular animated character on Viacom’s NickelodeonSquarePants channel recently visited schools in Namibia. The show is aired in 171 markets

around the world in 25 languages.

Source: See endnote 7.

Table 7. Childhood Marketing Efforts from Around the World

promotes the acquisition of materialistic values,which have been linked to depression and lowself-esteem. Research shows that children withmore materialistic values are also less likely toengage in environmentally sustainable behav-iors such as recycling or conserving water.10

The Impact of Commercialismon Play

Children’s favorite leisure activity these days, inboth industrial and developing countries, iswatching television. In the United States, chil-dren spend more time in front of televisionscreens than in any other activity besides sleep-ing: about 40 hours a week outside ofschool. Nineteen percent of U.S. babiesunder the age of one have a television intheir bedroom. In Viet Nam, 91 per-cent of mothers report that their childrenwatch television often, as do more than80 percent of mothers in Argentina,Brazil, India, and Indonesia.11

Research indicates that the moreyoung children engage with screens, theless time they spend in creative play.Unlike other media such as reading andthe radio, which require people to imag-ine sounds or visual images, screen mediadoes all of that work. While there issome evidence that certain screen mediacan encourage children to play creativelyand enhance specific kinds of learning,when screens dominate children’s lives—regardless of content—they are a threat,not an enhancement, to creativity, play,and make-believe.12

The ability to view programs on DVDs,MP3 players, and cell phones, as well as onTIVO and other home recording devices thatprovide programming “on demand,” makesmultiple viewings of the same program a newfact of children’s lives. Across platforms, elec-tronic screens are the primary means for mar-keters to target children. Loveble media

characters, cutting-edge technology, brightlycolored packaging, and well-funded marketingstrategies combine in coordinated campaignsto capture the hearts, minds, and imagina-tions of children—teaching them to value thatwhich can be bought over their own make-believe creations.

Today, more than ever, children need thetime, space, tools, and silence essential fordeveloping their capacities for curiosity, cre-ativity, self-reflection, and meaningful engage-ment in the world. But when consumerismand materialistic values dominate society, cre-ative play is no longer valued. The toys thatnurture imagination—blocks, art supplies,

dolls, and stuffed animals free of computerchips and links to media—can be used repeat-edly and in a variety of ways, diminishing theneed to spend money on new toys. Toy librariesare another way to reduce spending on yetanother new item. (See Box 7.)13

The electronic wizardry characterizingtoday’s best-selling toys makes for great adver-tising campaigns. They look like fun. But they



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are created with a kind of planned obsoles-cence. They are not typically designed with thegoal of engaging children for years, or evenmonths. They are designed to sell. If interestwanes, so much the better—another versionwill soon be on the market. Toys that talk andchirp and do back flips all on their own takemuch of the creativity, and therefore the value,away from play activities.

Brand-licensed toys are an especially largebusiness, bringing in an estimated $6.2 bil-lion just in the United States in 2007.14 Toysthat represent familiar media characterswhose voices, actions, and personalities arealready set rob children of opportunities toexercise their own creativity—especially ifkids are familiar with the program on whichthe character is based. Unless some way isfound to prevent marketers from targetingchildren, their play activities will foster imi-tation, reactivity, and dependence on screens



rather than creativity, self-initiation, andactive exploration.

Nurturing Play in aCommercialized World

Protecting children’s right to play is inextri-cably linked with their right to grow anddevelop without being undermined by com-mercial interests. Laws protecting childrenfrom corporate marketers vary widely, withmany countries relying primarily on industryself-regulation. The most stringent laws are inthe Canadian province of Quebec, which pro-hibits television advertising to children under13, and in Norway and Sweden, which pro-hibit such advertising to children under 12.In Greece, toy ads cannot be aired beforeten o’clock at night, and ads for war toys areprohibited entirely. France has banned pro-grams on broadcast television aimed at chil-

A clever way that many parents are reducingconsumerism in childhood is through toylibraries. These are like book libraries—exceptchildren check out toys and games instead.

Located in the heart of a community, toylibraries bring families together to share col-lective goods. One estimate found that 4,500toy libraries are scattered across 31 countries.In New Zealand, for example, 217 toy librariesserve over 23,000 children.

By providing toys and games, the librarieshelp parents save money. Based on local com-munity values, toy librarians can also screenout toys that lack educational value or rein-force negative consumer values, like Barbiedolls and toy cars and guns.

The libraries also resolve an importantdilemma facing parents: how do you fulfillchildren’s basic right to play with varied andstimulating goods and still avoid excessiveconsumption and waste? In addition, the toy

library helps parents decrease the influenceof the marketplace on their children. Parentsoften find that shopping and buying for child-ren at toy stores is fraught with stress andconflict. Borrowing at the toy library offerschildren an abundance of goods from whichto choose and a wealth of challenging toys.

Sharing collective goods also teaches chil-dren many valuable lessons, such as gener-osity, empathy, and environmental values.These positive sharing experiences appear tobe viral, and parents expand into other suchexperiences such as donating toys, engagingin children’s clothing swaps, giving second-hand goods as gifts, joining book coopera-tives, sharing cars, and joining time banks.

—Lucie Ozanne, Marketing Professor,University of Canterbury, New Zealand—Julie Ozanne, Marketing Professor,

Virginia Tech UniversitySource: See endnote 13.

Box 7. Toy Libraries

dren under the age of three.15Because of the Internet and satellite broad-

casting, however, marketers are increasinglyable to target children in any country, mak-ing adequate regulation a complex but evenmore essential task. Changes in regulatorypolicy take time and are often met with strongand well-funded resistance from commercialstakeholders. As a result, the task of “sav-ing” play in a commercialized world rests onthe efforts of nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) and professional groups that areworking to influence policy, set limits on mar-keters’ access to children, and help parents andschools encourage creative play. Public insti-tutions, such as libraries and museums, canoffer alternative creative educational oppor-tunities. (See Box 8.)16

Organized efforts to stop the commercialexploitation of children are in their infancy, butthey continue to grow. Pressure from NGOshas led the U.K. government to regulate themarketing of certain foods on television. InBrazil, thanks to efforts by the national advo-cacy group Criança e Consumo, the state tele-vision station in São Paulo no longer marketsto children, and a bill prohibiting marketingto children is being considered in the nationallegislature.17

In the United States, which regulates mar-keting to children less than most industrialdemocracies, pressure from groups such asthe Campaign for a Commercial-Free Child-hood has forced companies like Disney andMcDonald’s to alter some of their marketingpractices. The Federal CommunicationsCommission recently launched a review of itsrules for children’s television with the goal ofmeeting the new demands of digital tech-nology. And professional organizations suchas the American Academy of Pediatrics andAmerican Psychological Association haveissued recommendations that include noscreen time for children under the age oftwo, limited screen time for older children,

and restricted advertising and marketing tochildren under eight.18

Ad hoc groups of health care professionalsand educators have come together to issuestrong statements about the importance ofplay and the need to limit commercial accessto children. In the United Kingdom, diverseluminaries such as the Archbishop of Canter-bury, children’s book author Phillip Pullman,and members of Parliament have joined witheducators and health care professionals todeplore the state of childhood in the country,urging limited commercial access to childrenand advocating for increased opportunities forcreative play.19

Efforts to limit children’s exposure to com-mercialism and promote creative play are aidedby a growing recognition of the need for chil-dren to connect with nature. Studies indicatethat children play more creatively in greenspace. As a result of grassroots efforts fromNGOs like the Children & Nature Network,the U.S. Congress is currently considering theNo Child Left Inside Act, which providesfunding for teachers to use schoolyards andlocal green spaces for lessons. In the Nether-lands, conservation and environmentalactivists—in cooperation with the Minister ofAgriculture, Nature and Food Safety—are urg-ing Parliament to support major efforts tohelp children connect with nature. In Ger-many, Waldkindergärtens—preschools whereyoung children spend their school time out innature—are flourishing.20

Previous generations took it for grantedthat children used their leisure time for play.But that is no longer true. Play is an endan-gered species, and there needs to be a con-scious, concerted effort to save make-believefor future generations. The consequence ofmillions of children growing up deprived ofplay is a world bereft of joy, creativity, criticalthinking, individuality, and meaning—so muchof what makes it worthwhile to be human.We need to let children play.





Periodic reinvention is important for all insti-tutions, but particularly for natural historymuseums, which often seem to be more con-cerned with the past than the future—more“cabinets of curiosities” showcasing life’s his-torical forms than institutions grappling withthe most challenging problems of today andtomorrow.

Helping people of all ages learn aboutnature and the science of life is an obviousrole for natural history museums. Publicengagement should not be their secondarymission, but one that is primary. Consid-ering this and financial realities—museumshave expenses and depend on payingvisitors—exhibits have to be scientificallyaccurate as well as engaging for a widearray of people.

One institution that has tackled this issueis the California Academy of Sciences in SanFrancisco. No function has been untouched.The challenge was to be green and sustain-able—intellectually, financially, educationally,and operationally—while remaining faithfulto the Academy’s core mission: to be themost engaging natural history museum inthe world, to inspire visitors of all ages to becurious about the natural world, expandtheir knowledge of it, and feel a responsibil-ity to preserve it; to encourage youngvisitors to pursue careers in science; toimprove science education at all levels; tocarry out the highest-quality research onquestions of major importance; and to besuccessful financially.

The Academy started its reinvention witha new building completed in 2008—a neces-sity after an earthquake damaged the old onein 1989. This building earned the highestpossible rating in the Leadership in Energyand Environmental Design rating system:Platinum. Actually, by exploiting a variety ofgreen building technologies and strategies,

including recycled building materials, naturalventilation, solar energy generation, and aliving roof, it exceeded the threshold for Plat-inum certification. Today the new Academyuses about 30–35 percent less energy thantypical for a building of its type, generates213,000 kilowatt-hours of solar electricity,and prevents 3.6 million gallons of run-offwith its living roof, which is also a popularexhibit for visitors.

Along with a new physical structure, theAcademy has made some innovative new pro-gram additions in order to engage broaderaudiences. A few highlights include:• Free admission one day each month, andalways free for visiting classes.

• A glass-walled “project laboratory” wherevisitors can view scientists’ work and learnabout the details on connected video screens.

• A robust Web site providing lesson planningmaterial, scientists’ blogs, and a live videofeed to Farallon Islands, a nature reserve oth-erwise closed to visitors.

• A Teacher Institute on Science and Sustain-ability that engages elementary school teach-ers each year.

• A program called NightLife to attract the agegroup least represented as visitors—21- to40-year-olds. Every Thursday evening,visitors 21 and older can enjoy the exhibits,scientific presentations, drinks, and livelyDJs—all of which make the Academy whathas been rated the “steamiest” date spot inSan Francisco.

Whether for NightLife or for class visits,the Academy is challenging more people toconsider two essential questions of our time:How did life arise and evolve, and how can itbe sustained?

Gregory C. FarringtonExecutive Director,

California Academy of SciencesSource: See endnote 16.

Box 8. Transformation of the California Academy of Sciences

Education for a Sustainable Society,” prepared forInternational Workshop, Gothenburg, 2–4 May2007.

5. D. Sommer, I. Pramling Samuelsson, and K.Hundheide, Child Perspectives and Children’s Per-spectives in Theory and Practice (New York: Springer,in press); Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga, op. cit.note 4.

6. E. Johansson, Etiska Möten i FörskolebarnsVärldar (Ethical Encounters in Preschool Chil-dren’s Worlds), Göteborg Studies in Educational Sci-ences 251 (Gothenburg, Sweden: University ofGothenburg, 2007).

7. E. Johansson and I. Pramling Samuelsson,Lek och Läroplan. Möten Mellan Barn och Lärare iFörskola och Skola (Play and Curricula. Encountersbetween Children and Teachers in Preschool andSchool) (Gothenburg, Sweden: Acta UniversitatisGothoburgensis, 2006); E. Johansson and I. Pram-ling Samuelsson, “Play and Learning—An Inte-grated Wholeness,” in R. New and M. Cochran,eds., Early Childhood Education—An InternationalEarly Childhood Encyclopedia, Vol. 4 (Westport,CT: Praeger Publishers, 2007), pp. 1270–73; L.Katz and S. Chard, Engaging Children’s Minds:The Project Approach (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub-lishing Corporation, 1989).

8. A. Wals, TheEnd of ESD…The Beginning ofTransformative Learning—Emphasizing the E inESD, presented at the Gothenburg Consultation onSustainability in Higher Education, 2006, p. 45.

9. Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga, op. cit. note 4.

10. Y. Kaga, “The Role of Early Childhood Edu-cation in a Sustainable World,” in Pramling Samuels-son and Kaga, op. cit. note 4, pp. 9–18.

11. Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga, op. cit. note4; J. Davis, “What Might Education for Sustain-ability Look Like in Early Childhood? A Case forParticipatory, Whole-of-Settings Approach,” inibid., pp. 18–25.

12. O. Fujii and C. Izumi, “A Silkworm is a Fas-cinating Insect for Children,” in Pramling Samuels-son and Kaga, op. cit. note 4, pp. 87–93.

13. I. Engdahl and E. Ärlemalm-Hagsér, “SwedishPreschool Children Show Interest and Are Involvedin the Future of the World—Children’s Voices MustInfluence Education for Sustainable Development,”in Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga, op. cit. note 4,pp. 116–22; SOU, Jämställd Förskola—Om Bety-delsen av Jämställdhet och Genus i Förskolans Peda-gogiska Arbetet (An Equal Preschool—About theImportance of Equality and Gender in PreschoolPractice), Slutbetänkande från delegationen förjämställdhet i förskolan (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2006),p. 75.

14. OECD, op. cit. note 1.

15. T. Herbert, “Eco-intelligent Education for aSustainable Future Life,” in Pramling Samuelssonand Kaga, op. cit. note 4, pp. 63–67.

Commercialism in Children’s Lives

1. Portions of this article first appeared in SusanLinn, The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in aCommercialized World (New York: The New Press,2006); World Health Organization (WHO), Diet,Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases(Geneva: 2003); A. E. Becker et al., “Eating Behav-iors and Attitudes Following Prolonged Exposure toTelevision Among Ethnic Fijian Adolescent Girls,”British Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 180 (2002), pp.509–14; American Psychological Association (APA),Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (Washington,DC: 2007), p. 3; American Academy of Pediatrics,“Joint Statement on the Impact of EntertainmentViolence on Children,” Congressional Public HealthSummit, 26 July 2000;M. Buijzen and P.M. Valken-burg, “The Effects of Television Advertising onMaterialism, Parent–Child Conflict, and Unhappi-ness: A Review of Research,” Applied Developmen-tal Psychology, September 2003, pp. 437–56; U.S.Federal Trade Commission, Self-Regulation in theAlcohol Industry: A Review of Industry Efforts toAvoid Promoting Alcohol to Underage Consumers(Washington, DC: 1999), p. 4; National CancerInstitute, Changing Adolescent Smoking Prevalence,Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 14(Washington, DC: November 2001.

2. Linn, op. cit. note 1.

3. Office of the United Nations High Commis-


Notes STATE OF THE WORLD 2010

sioner for Human Rights, “Convention on theRights of the Child: General Assembly Resolution44/25,” 20 November 1989.

4. Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality (NewYork: Basic Books, 1971); Linn, op. cit. note 1, pp.85–153; Angeline Lillard, “Pretend Play as TwinEarth: A Social-cognitive Analysis,”DevelopmentalReview, December 2001, pp. 495–531; Susan M.Burns and Charles Brainerd, “Effects of Construc-tive and Dramatic Play on Perspective Taking in VeryYoung Children,” Developmental Psychology, Sep-tember 1979, pp. 512–21; Dorothy Singer, “TeamBuilding in the Classroom,” Early Childhood Today,April 2002, pp. 37–41; Shirley R. Wyver and SusanH. Spence, “Play and Divergent Problem Solving:Evidence Supporting a Reciprocal Relationship,”Early Education and Development, October 1999,pp. 419–44; Sandra Russ, Andrew L. Robins, andBeth A. Christiano, “Pretend Play: LongitudinalPrediction of Creativity and Affect in Fantasy inChildren,” Creativity Research Journal, vol. 12,no. 2 (1999), pp. 129–39; Elena Bodrova and Deb-orah Leong, “Self-Regulation as a Key to SchoolReadiness: How Early Childhood Teachers CanPromote this Critical Competency,” in MarthaZaslow and Ivelisse Martinez-Beck, eds., CriticalIssues in Early Childhood Professional Development(Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, 2006),pp. 203–24.

5. U.S. pretend play time from Sandra Hofferth,unpublished data from two Child DevelopmentSupplements to the Michigan Panel Study ofIncome Dynamics, 2006; Japan and France fromLego Learning Institute, Time for Playful Learning?A Cross-cultural Study of Parental Values and Atti-tudes Toward Children’s Time for Play (Slough,Berks, U.K.: 2002).

6. Jill Casner-Lotto and Linda Barrington, AreThey Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectiveson the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of NewEntrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce (NewYork: Conference Board, 2006).

7. Figure of $100 million from Bruce Horovitz,“Six Strategies Marketers Use to Make Kids WantThings Bad,” USA Today, 22 November 2006;$17 billion from Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: TheCommercialized Child and the New Consumer Cul-

ture (New York: Scribner, 2004), p. 21; RoisinBurke, “Food Giants Serve Up a €1.2bn Dish toChildren,” The Sunday Independent (Ireland), 14June 2009. Table 7 from the following: James T.Areddy and Peter Sanders, “In China ChildrenLearn English the Disney Way,” Wall Street Jour-nal, 20 April 2009; Eric Bellman, “McDonald’s toExpand in India,” Wall Street Journal, 30 June2009; Anurag Sharma, “Cartoons—Animators Lookat Licensing, Business Deals,” The Press Trust ofIndia Limited, 10 May 2009; MTV Networks,Africa, “SpongeBob SquarePants Surfs intoNamibia,” 24 June 2009.

8. Becker et al., op. cit. note 1; Israel fromDaphne Lemish, “The School as a Wrestling Arena:The Modelling of a Television Series,” Communi-cation, vol. 22, no. 4 (1997), pp. 395–418.

9. Sam Schechner and Joseoph Pereira, “Hasbroand Discovery Form Children’s TV Network,”Wall Street Journal, 2 May 2009; Dorothy G. Singeret al., “Children’s Pastimes and Play in SixteenNations: Is Free-Play Declining?” American Jour-nal of Play, winter 2009, pp. 283–312.

10. Capitalism from Allen Kanner, “Globalizationand the Commercialization of Childhood,” Tikkun,September/October 2005, pp. 49–51; depressionfrom Schor, op. cit. note 7; sustainable behaviorfrom Tim Kasser, “Frugality, Generosity, and Mate-rialism in Children and Adolescents,” in KristinAnderson Moore and Laura H. Lippman, eds.,What Do Children Need to Flourish? Conceptualiz-ing and Measuring Indicators of Positive Develop-ment (New York: Springer, 2005), pp. 357–74.

11. Leisure activity from Singer et al., op. cit.note 9; 40 hours from Donald F. Roberts et al.,Kids & Media @ the New Millennium (Menlo Park,CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 1999), p.78; babies from Victoria Rideout and ElizabethHamel, The Media Family: Electronic Media in theLives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers, and TheirParents (Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser FamilyFoundation, May 2006), p. 18, and from Fred J.Zimmerman, Dmitri A. Christakis, and AndrewN. Meltzoff, “Television and DVD/Video View-ing in Children Younger than 2 Years,” Archives ofPediatric & Adolescent Medicine, vol. 161, no. 5(2007), pp. 473–79; Viet Nam and other countries


STATE OF THE WORLD 2010 Notes

from Singer et al., op. cit. note 9.

12. Less time in creative play from Elizabeth A.Vandewater, David S. Bickham, and June H. Lee,“Time Well Spent? Relating Television Use to Chil-dren’s Free-Time Activities,” Pediatrics, February2006, pp. 181–91; some screen media encourageplay from Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer,The House of Make-Believe: Play and the DevelopingImagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1990), pp. 177–98; reading and radio fromM. M. Vibbert and L. K. Meringoff, Children’sProduction and Application of Story Imagery: ACross-medium Investigation (Cambridge, MA: Pro-ject Zero, Harvard University, 1981), and fromPatti M. Valkenberg, “Television and the Child’sDeveloping Imagination,” in Dorothy G. Singer andJerome L. Singer, eds., Handbook of Children andthe Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,2001), pp. 121–34; boon to certain learning fromDaniel R. Anderson, “Educational Television IsNot an Oxymoron,”Annals of the American Acad-emy of Political and Social Science, vol. 557, no. 1(1998), pp. 24–38.

13. Box 7 based on Lucie K. Ozanne and Julie L.Ozanne, “Parental Mediation of the Market’s Influ-ence on their Children: Toy Libraries as SafeHavens,” paper presented at The Academy of Mar-keting Conference, Leeds, U.K., 7–9 July 2009.

14. Estimate of $6.2 billion from Anita Frazier,Toy Industry Analyst, NPD Group, New York, dis-cussion with author, 11 September 2009.

15. Quebec, Norway, Sweden, and Greece fromCorinna Hawkes,Marketing Food to Children: TheGlobal Regulatory Environment (Geneva: WHO,2004), p. 19; France from “Shows Aimed at Tod-dlers Banned,” The Independent (London), 21August 2008.

16. Box 8 based on the following: data on envi-ronmental benefits from Arup (consulting firm),“California Academy of Sciences,” at www.arup.com/Projects/California_Academy_of_Sciences.aspx;Rana Creek Living Architecture, “California Acad-emy of Sciences, The Osher Living Roof,” atwww.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=509;California Academy of Sciences, “New CaliforniaAcademy of Sciences Receives Highest Possible

Rating from U.S. Green Building Council: LEEDPlatinum,” press release (San Francisco: 8 October2008); for more information on the Academy andits programs, see www.calacademy.org.

17. Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood,“TV Cultura Goes Commercial-Free,”News, Octo-ber 2008.

18. American Academy of Pediatrics, “News Briefs,”3 October 2005; Brian L. Wilcox et al.,Report of theAPA Task Force on Advertising and Children (Wash-ington, DC: APA, 20 February 2004).

19. Christopher Morgan, “Archbishop Warns ofDysfunctional ‘Infant Adults,’” Sunday Times (Lon-don), 17 September 2006; Zoe Williams, The Com-mercialisation of Childhood (London: Compass,December 2006).

20. Green space from Mary Ann Kirkby, “Natureas a Refuge in Children’s Environments,” Chil-dren’s Environments Quarterly, spring 1989, pp.7–12; Children & Nature Network from RichardLouv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Childrenfrom Nature-Deficit Disorder (New York: Algo-nquin Publishing, 2005); No Child Left Inside Actand Netherlands from Cheryl Charles et al., Chil-dren and Nature 2008: A Report on the Movementto Reconnect Children to the Natural World (SantaFe, NM: Children & Nature Network, January2008), pp. 10, 38; Waldkindergärtens from Harryde Quetteville, “Waldkindergärten: The Forest Nurs-eries Where Children Learn in Nature’s Classroom,”Daily Telegraph (London), 18 October 2008.

Rethinking School Food:The Power of the Public Plate

1. K. Morgan and R. Sonnino, The School FoodRevolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sus-tainable Development (London: Earthscan, 2008).

2. R. Sonnino, “Quality Food, Public Procure-ment and Sustainable Development: The SchoolMeal Revolution in Rome,” Environment and Plan-ning A, vol. 41, no. 2 (2009), pp. 425–40.

3. Morgan and Sonnino, op. cit. note 1, pp.137–64, 177.


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