Do your Children Play Video Games Online with Unhealthy Products Placed in Them?

If you are a company that needs to sell to children, merely to throw together an advertisement with children happily running home and digging into a bowl of Cheerios, or something won’t do anymore. That would be laughably old-fashioned to today's children soaked in technology. Corporations have long since realized that they need to tap their audiences by speaking to them in a language they would appreciate - video games. Your child likes to play video games online; there's nothing wrong with that; especially when the game happens to be a particularly creative and entertaining one - something like the Create a Comic online game that allows a child to throw together her own comic strip in a matter of minutes.

A parent who watches her child play such a game could even be secretly pleased at how healthy the game is. Upon looking closer though, any parent could quickly realize that the "game" cleverly pushes some unwholesome snack, junk food or other child-targeted product. When marketers make their own apps and games to target children with wherever they use technology, it can become very difficult for parents to instill any principles in children of choosing a responsible diet. The worst part of course, is that children who like to play video games that advertise surreptitiously, go and spread the word among their friends. The companies might as well pay these kids to act as their brand ambassadors.

The first lady is concerned enough with this kind of tactic that the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has squarely placed the blame for the weight problems faced by America's children on these unfair marketing practices. And the Federal Trade Commission has a study coming out on what it thinks of these tricks, too.

For the longest period of time, television was about the only medium that marketers could reach children by. Since television has been around for this long, the government has had time to evolve rules to restrict what these companies do to influence children. When children switch to Facebook and video games though, these things are so new that the government hasn't had the time yet. It's up to parents to step in until the government does.

Children are being drawn to these websites to play video games and manufacturers are heavily advertising to them in ways they never would be allowed to on television. Phones and computers happen to be a very personal kind of medium. The user sits close to the computer are holds the phone close to her person. It's a real coup for these companies that they should have access to children's minds in such an intimate fashion.

Do you really want to allow this to happen to your child? You be the judge.

Help your Child Entertain Himself - Show him how to Play Jigsaw Puzzles

There are many fundamental skills and abilities children need to hone growing up,  that are beautifully addressed when they play jigsaw puzzles. Even if these puzzles do seem like a lot of hard work, you'd be surprised how often children go for them with just as much enthusiasm as they would for a game out in the playground or at the videogame console. There is something about solving something that takes shape before their very eyes that children find particularly appealing. Of course, maintaining a child's interest in these puzzles requires that you find exactly the right kind for their tastes and for their age. Let's look at a few of the most popular puzzles there are today for 5-year-olds - both of the regular kind and free online ones.

Let's start with the world of cars from Mattell and Disney. It's a rather simple 24 piece puzzle that should be just the right thing to help draw a child into the world of jigsaw puzzles for the first time. As a puzzle, it's neither overly simple, nor too complex. The fact that it's about a famous movie with talking cars, makes it just right for most little boys. A lot of manufacturers who design these products seem to entirely forget the audience they are trying to market themselves to. Little boys can be very rough with their toys - especially if their toys are made of cardboard. Manufacturers however just go and make them out of thin and fussy material. The World of Cars game is just right for the way little children play jigsaw puzzles. The pieces are made of heavy duty cardboard that are virtually indestructible. The completed puzzle makes an image that's about a square foot in size.

The SpongeBob Squarepants jigsaw puzzle would make for a great step up from the simple challenges presented by the World of Cars. Children happen to be crazy about Nickelodeon's sea-dwelling dishwashing sponge. Any child above I should appreciate this 70 piece puzzle. It certainly does have what it takes to completely involve a child.

These puzzles however, cost money. At some point, you are likely to wonder if there isn't something you could get your child for free. As a matter fact online jigsaw puzzles fit that bill quite nicely. JigZone  happens to the a wonderful destination for children who can't resist puzzles, wherever they find them. They have puzzles for every mood and every occasion. If it's Christmas for example, they have dozens of Christmas related puzzles that your child can take advantage of. Around Independence Day, you have patriotic-themed ones. What does it feel like to play jigsaw puzzles online? For the most part, it feels exactly as it does playing real tactile puzzles.

Do Products that Promise to Train your Brain really Work?

Seniors who constantly worry about retaining their mental acuity into their old age these days, have all kinds of businesses to look to that aim to help them stay on their mental toes. Retirement communities and many businesses have lately been involving themselves in promoting mental fitness - brain exercises, classes and games that they promise will do a lot for an elderly person's attention span, memory and alertness. They aren't hawking these products to an unreceptive market either. Seniors today, are truly interested in staying mentally fit. And the "train your brain" market that sells everything from classes to video games to help with mental fitness has tripled in value to about a half billion dollars a year.

Mental fitness has become so hot that you couldn't run a retirement community today without something by way of mental fitness. One out of two retirement communities today will offer you some way to train your brain.

Software, games - the high-tech market is all over the mental fitness market. The question with anything like this though is, are they any use? Are all these marketers of products merely taking advantage of an unregulated market?

That's what some experts are saying. These high-tech brain games and all these expensive activities, neurologists say, are no better at training your brain and keeping it stimulated and alert than a regular crossword puzzle.  The one healthy side to this trend of course is knowing that old folks these days are completely engaged with staying alert and productive to the day they pass on. Seniors these days, according to a poll done by the Associated Press, are deeply concerned about mentally failing and not being able to command the dignity and respect they have their whole lives. In fact, according to the poll, more seniors today are worried about their mental sharpness than about dying. And so, here we have a market that's completely poised to take advantage of this degree of concern - products trying to train your brain will make up a $10 billion industry in five years.

Not all research stands against products that promise to train your brain though. One game for instance, tasks you at trying to find specific words amid a bunch of other words while you are distracted by random noises. Researchers find that games such as this one do actually help people with their ability to pay attention for a reasonably extended period of time. People just shouldn't come to these games hoping for quick results.

What these products cannot do is, arrest or reverse Alzheimer's. And also, if you are already quite sharp, there's nothing more these games can do for you. These aren't some kind of scientifically-proven secret method. They're just your regular mental activities that can help you stay on your toes like any other activity could. If you would like to try one of these games out before actually buying them, you could find some for free at BrainExperiment.org.