Did you ever wonder why your teenager receives those credit card applications

AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA

Resources

Home

Statement of Purpose

Current Action Alert ( sign up to receive AFA of PA Action Alerts

Pornography Fight

Pro-Life Issues

Did you ever wonder why your teenager receives those credit card applications, or offers from Seventeen magazine or Columbia House Record Club in the mail? According to the December 3 Wall Street Journal, "more than one million U.S. high school students take time out of their school day to fill out a survey asking their names, addresses, grade-point averages, races, religions and social views." Schools are told by the survey's sponsors, National Research Center (NRC), the students' names and profiles will be distributed to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. Recently it came to light that the information is also sold to commercial marketers!

Not surprisingly, NRC, lobbied to block an amendment to President Bush's federal education bill that would require parental consent for collecting students' personal information. Interestingly enough, the in-school commercial news program Channel One lobbied hard to block the same amendment! The estimate is that Channel One is in over 760 schools in Pennsylvania. Several times during each daily broadcast students are urged to go to Channel One's website. There they are asked to participate in contests and surveys requesting personal information. Annually Channel One spends hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for unrestricted access to their captive audience of students. One again has to ask if Channel One's main goal is education or profit. The teen market is over 63 billion dollars annually--a prime target for advertisers.

Nosy Questionnaires