Abstract
Marketing to young children has become an increasingly controversial issue because children younger than eight-years-old have a limited understanding of persuasive intent. Critics of children's advertising argue that children's inability to understand the motivation behind advertising makes it impossible for them to cognitively resist persuasive advertising appeals. While framing young children as victims is beneficial in the fight for more rigorous advertising regulation, it has dampened discourse and research on children's agency and curtailed efforts to create early childhood curricula that might foster media literacy skills. The present proposal includes a review of the literature on advertising to children, the research on children's comprehension of commercials, and current media literacy pedagogy. It describes a media literacy curriculum developed and implemented by the author as part of her undergraduate senior thesis project and puts forth a new procedure for assessing the curriculum's effectiveness.