Consumer Kids

This book will shock you.

Consumer Kids shows how, more than ever before, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, our children are being tracked and targeted by big business, which sells them back their dreams, packages their childhood and exploits their vulnerabilities.

It looks at why children torture their Barbies, how boys feel about David Beckham, why mums are cooler than dads, why children in the toughest families make the most ardent consumers and why, above all, too much marketing makes you unhappy.

This hard-hitting expose is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the deeper implications of the runaway commercial world we live in.

About the Authors

Ed Mayo is a leading campaigner and commentator on social and economic issues and is Chief Executive of Consumer Focus. Ed has written widely, including research on children as consumers that has been described by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian as 'a groundbreaking study'.

Ed helped to found the Fairtrade brand and was the strategist behind the world's most successful anti-poverty campaign, Jubilee 2000. The Guardian nominated him as one of the top 100 most influential social innovators and he is a World Economics Forum 'Young Global Leader'. Ed is married with three children and lives in South East London.

Agnes Nairn is an academic researcher and writer based in Bath. She focuses on the impacts of commercialism on children and has published in a wide range of international journals. Her reports include The Simpson's are Cool but Barbie's a Minger and Watching, Wanting and Wellbeing - the first study of the links between media exposure, materialism and self-esteem levels in UK children.