Should we be thinking about the negative societal effects of marketing? Should we ban marketing that is based on manipulating people by harming their self-esteem or encouraging them to do unhealthy things?  Should we ban advertising that utilizes techniques that effect how our brains work?  Should we demand that ads stop distracting us from our thoughts?  I have been wondering about this.

Marketers today are learning how to reach down into the wiring of the brain itself, to manipulate us at a level that we do not consciously perceive and cannot control.  Science has come a long way in recent decades.  There is a new kind of marketing called neuromarketing that actually uses brain scans to measure how our brains react to certain stimuli.  We are in danger of marketers using the information gained from these new techniques to come up with ways to sell us things and make us do things and we may in many cases be literally unable to resist.

It is not unprecedented to think about restricting marketing, even in the "free market" United States.  We have confronted the problem of people being harmed by marketing in the past, with tobacco advertising and false claims of medical benefits.  It used to be against regulations to make false claims in TV ads.  But by and large companies have free range to manipulate people as they see fit.