Imagine you’re lounging comfortably at home, watching TV, when a car ad comes up showing a vehicle travelling at high speed on a windy road. Inside, an infant is shown in a baby seat that… isn’t secured. How would that commercial make you feel about the advertiser? Thankfully that never happens in real life, right?
Unfortunately, that’s precisely what does happen in a related domain, as our research team revealed. In a study just published in The Journal of Pediatrics, we find that almost 80% of baby product packaging depicting a sleeping infant show a sleep position clearly identified as a major risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
SIDS is the unexpected death of a baby under the age of 1 year old that remains unexplained after a full investigation. Every year in the United States, there are about 1,400 deaths due to SIDS (figures for the year 2020).
