This book investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be under-aged hyperconsumers.Sharon Beder shows how marketers and advertisers are targeting ever younger
children in a relentless campaign, transforming children's play into a commercial opportunity and taking advantage of childish anxieties.Beder investigates the corporate relations and ideals
that infiltrate every aspect of our lives, especially through our public services. She presents an alarming picture of how a child's social development - through education, health care and
nutrition - has become an ordered conveyor belt of consumerist conditioning. Focusing on education in particular, Beder explains how businesses are taking control of more and more aspects of
schooling, not only for profit but to erode state schooling and promote business values. Similarly, she writes how children are taught from an early age that the pharmacy offers the solutions
to all their ills, and how pharmaceuticals are only to happy to 'educate' them.