CFK Reports From: It’s Child’s Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children
Event: Forum
Organized By: Kaiser Family Foundation
Where/When: Barbara Jordan Conference Center; July 19, 2006

The seemingly innocuous online games kids play at the Web sites of companies such as McDonald’s, Kraft, and Hershey are targeted marketing tools for food products, according to a study released by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

When you learn that a teen is in foster care, what is your reaction? Empathy? Curiosity? Apprehension? News stories and popular media portrayals of young people involved with the child welfare system, paired with selective statistics about how this population is faring, can feed apprehension at the expense of a more positive view of the strength that can come from overcoming adversity. La Terra Cole, an intern with Connect For Kids, reflects on some recent "mainstream media" portrayals of foster care.

CFK Reports From: Violent and Explicit Video Games: Informing Parents and Protecting Children
Event: Hearing
Organized By: Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection
Where/When: June 14, 2006; 2123 Rayburn House Office Building

When it was revealed last year that a popular video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” contained a hidden graphic sex scene unlocked by downloadable software, members of Congress waged a war against graphic content in video games.

Youth Communication, the non-profit founded by Keith Hefner in New York City to give young people a voice on the things that matter to them, is now 25 years old—a notable milestone in the notoriously under-funded world of youth media. Lisa R. Rhodes, a former Youth Communication writer herself, looks at how Hefner's organization has grown and thrived, transforming young lives along the way.

The Turn Beauty Inside Out Girls Leadership Retreat 2006 will focus on the music industry.

The Turn Beauty Inside Out (TBIO) Campaign is an ongoing public education effort started by New Moon® Magazine and now coordinated by Mind on the Media.

While parents worry about potential dangers to their children lurking in our web-surfing, IM-ing, text-messaging culture, their efforts to help can be hampered by their own lack of knowledge. The Teenangels program – which trains young people to protect their peers online – is one way around that problem. Tamekia Reece takes a look.

The “G” in family movie ratings clearly doesn’t stand for “girl-power.” Researchers at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California studied 101 kids’ flicks and found that male roles predominate: three of four characters are male, and fewer than one in three of speaking roles overall belongs to a female. There’s evidence that exposure to television is a “significant and positive” predictor of sex role acceptance and attitudes among children and adults. The study was study sponsored by the nonprofit Dads and Daughters and its See Jane program.

Here’s some good news about technology’s impact on kids. While traditional video games are among the culprits behind an increasingly inactive lifestyle for children, a new type of video game is actually helping kids become more physically active. These "exergames" require kids to move around to win. Get Up and Move, an organization of scientists, medical professionals, and artists, has the low-down on games that help kids get down – and dance, run, skip, or maneuver their way into more active lifestyles.

Third Way , a progressive strategy center, has issued a report detailing the extent to which the Internet pornography industry influences children’s lives, and the steps parents, policymakers, the porn industry, and others can take to prevent harm to children. Among the facts the group cites: the largest group of consumers of Internet pornography are youth 12-17 years of age.