Compliance of Parenting Magazines Advertisements with American Academy of Pediatrics Recommendations.

Michael Pitt,Karen Sheehan,Jennifer Berger

doi:10.3390/children3040023

Abstract

This study examined 3218 advertisements from the two parenting magazines with highest circulation in the United States. The authors compared each advertisement for a product for use by children, against all the published recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on topics such as toy safety, helmet use, age-defined choking hazards, infant sleep safety, and others. Any advertisement with images or products which went against a published AAP recommendation was deemed as non-adherence and was categorized according to the statement it contradicted. Nearly one in six (15.7%) of the advertisements contained example(s) of non-adherence to AAP recommendations, with twelve categories of offense represented. Categories ranked by overall share from most to least include: non-Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved medical treatments, age-defined choking hazards, vitamins, cold medicine, formula, oral care, screen time, toy/playground safety, infant sleep, nutrition, water safety, and fall risk. Given that repeated exposure to messages in advertisements has been associated with changes in health decision-making, and parents often turn to parenting magazines for advice and ideas regarding their children, the publishers might consider screening the content in order to prevent confusing and potentially dangerous messages from being disseminated in the media.

Highlights

Magazines remain an influential source of health information for women and mothers and have been shown to influence decisions about their own health and their children’s [1,2,3]
Our objective was to expand on these analyses and determine the frequency and categories of advertisements for products for children in the top parenting magazines which contradict all published Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations, rather than a single category
We reviewed all the AAP Policy Statements and Where We Stand Statements and used their parenting website https://healthychildren.org to compile a list of AAP recommendations that were current in the years studied

Summary

Introduction

Magazines remain an influential source of health information for women and mothers and have been shown to influence decisions about their own health and their children’s [1,2,3]. Messages about health are found in the editorial content of the magazine, but are often present in the advertisements. These messages may be explicitly stated in the product being advertised (i.e., “Take this pill to feel better”) or they may be implied by the images used in the advertisements. The messages provided in magazine advertisements may act as repetitive visual reinforcers, normalizing behavior. When these messages are inconsistent with public health recommendations, they may inadvertently lead to unsafe practices

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Conclusion