Buy now! and save !!!

Think about this. How can you save money if you spend it? It doesn't make sense. Saving money is the opposite of spending it.

Ads, commercials, 'messages' and fashion

You know all about ads if you have a TV. Companies spend billions... yes, hundreds of billions of dollars on trying to get people (including, especially, kids like you) to buy things they don’t really want and don’t need. Advertising is really all about making people desire things. The ads do this in various ways. One of the most successful is by ‘spinning’ the product in such a way that it becomes cool, trendy and fashionable to have it — whatever it is. This is what designer labels (very well known brands) are all about. And kids fall for it as well as adults! Just check out how many items of clothing or shoes you or your friends have got that carry these ‘must have’ labels.

Peer pressure
If your friends all eat and drink well-known products, or they wear particular brands of shoes and clothing, it's very hard not to copy what they do. If you don't, you're un-cool. This is called peer pressure and it's a dream ticket for product advertisers because it gets the message across that it's cool to buy their product.

We penguins just don’t get the point of it.

We all wear the same feathers all year round. We keep them neat and clean and oil them regularly so we stay sleek and waterproof. Each year we grow new ones as the old ones get worn out and fall off. This is called moulting and all birds do it.

Food and drinks are high on the advertisers list

And it works! Advertisers wouldn’t waste money advertising if it didn’t. So all your life, you get bombarded by ‘messages’ — dozens a day, and not just on TV — trying to get you to buy stuff you don't need.

Result? Kids everywhere buy food and drink they don’t need — or pester their mums and dads to do it. The food companies even sponsor schools. The idea is not just to sell you stuff now but to make you loyal their ‘brand’. They know that if you start buying a particular brand of cola or hamburger, you’re likely to stay with that… which over the years could mean thousands of $$$ from you flowing into that company.

And there's another result; a really serious one which I'm sure you can guess...

The obesity epidemic
More and more kids are getting to be overweight or obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) regards childhood obesity as "one of the most serious global public health challenges for the 21st century." There are many reasons for this but as you might guess, the relentless advertising of high fat and sugary food and drink is not helping.