Let's get one thing straight. The notion that instituting parental controls for Facebook's underage users or creating a kid-friendly version will keep pre-teens off of the regular -- or unrestricted -- site is ridiculous. The 7.5 million children under the age of 13 who are lying to get...

"Technology-handling skills" and "the app gap" are catch phrases among early childhood educators these days. Low-income kids, the argument goes, are disadvantaged by inadequate exposure to tablets and other new technologies. But as Matt Richtel pointed out in the New York Times recently, children from low-income families spend...

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Public Citizen, and Corporate Accountability International have launched a campaign urging PBS to end a four-year marketing agreement between the popular children's show Martha Speaks and the fast food chain Chick-fil-A. The multi-pronged promotion, whose stated goals include to "reach children" and...

The truth: There I was, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, champion of limiting children's screen time, playing Angry Birds on the subway.

The justification: There I was, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, champion of limiting children's screen time, after a stressful day trying...

Universal Studio's animated film The Lorax opens in theaters on March 2. Environmentalists and people who care about children are already outraged -- with good reason. For more than forty years, the Dr. Seuss classic has been a clarion call for reducing consumption and promoting conservation. But the book's eloquent...

For those of us distressed by the commercialization of the holidays and of childhood in general, here's a chance to put our money where our values are. This year we can choose to avoid the toys companies are marketing most heavily to children.

Today, The Campaign for a Commercial-Free...

I don't know how you feel about the Occupy Movement or about Miley Cyrus. As for me, having spent the past decade speaking out against the corporate takeover of childhood, I tend to be sympathetic to the 99% message and beyond unsympathetic to the contribution Cyrus-as-Disney-star-Hannah-Montana has made...

My initial thoughts about the Canadian couple refusing to make public the sex of their baby were not kind. It seemed like just another media circus fomented by parents exploiting their children for celebrity -- like Jon and Kate, or the balloon boy. But two things made me change my...

The food industry is throwing a very expensive tantrum to quash proposed national nutritional guidelines for food advertised to kids. Meanwhile, yet another research study has been released demonstrating the harm done by advertising directed at children.

As concern about childhood obesity escalates, the...

Have you done your Earth Day shopping yet? Between greeting cards, jewelry, mugs, and teddy bears commemorating the day, its roots in environmental activism have all but been forgotten. Now corporations use Earth Day to sell us on the belief that we can buy our way into ecological sustainability. We...