Damn kids.

Is it just me or is there a noticeable plethora of advertising lately that either employs kids or the idea of being a kid. It could very well be my lack of "empathy" for children that makes me extra sensitive to such developments, but I think I'm onto something.

And I'm not talking about advertising for brands where you would expect to see kids like cereal or jello or Lipitor. Okay, maybe not Lipitor, just checking to see if you are still with me.

Rather I'm referring to complex, grown-up brands in high-tech communications, financial services and the energy industry.

This all dawned on me while watching the anthem spot for a new AT&T brand campaign, which tries to equate the magical possibilities of today's wireless age with the wonder of being a five year old kid again.

Before long I was thinking about those "abused kids" in the Ally Bank commercials, E-Trade's "talking babies" and Exxon Mobile's "young tinkerer's" campaign which promotes the problem solvers of tomorrow. I could go on.

Conventional wisdom could explain it this way. The demographic for most of these brands are people with relatively young families. So kids would be the obvious way to pull them in. This is the group, after all, who congest Facebook with pictures of their kids or their relative's kids so why not rope them in emotionally with a juvenile pitch.

Then there's the need to inject simplicity and clarity into an increasingly less easy to understand world. Politicians do this all the time. They constantly try to reduce complex issues to simplistic soundbites. Just the other day Sarah Palin explained away international relations as fighting in a school-yard. See, bringing it back to kids.

And advertisers love to dumb down too. There's nothing child's play about communications technology, financial services or energy. And yet by employing kids the message can be broken down to one of absolute simplicity. If babies get investing on E-Trade then what's your problem.

Too true. But I think there's something else going on here. Could it be the whitewashing of the withered present for the promise of a rosy future. And who embodies this future better than these wide-eyed, innocent and pure creatures.

Take the new AT&T campaign. It asks us to imagine a magical future of limitless possibilities through the wonder of a five year old child. Good age five. You're not really cognizant of the adult inspired and created grim reality around you like unending wars, culture clashes, religious strife, economic meltdowns, adverse climate changes, political and financial corruption.

Nor as a five year old will you see any contradiction between limitless possibility and the almost certain probably of impending limits being placed on what we can actually access on the internet and how we access it. Whether that be censorship in China or content controls in Britain. Or the issue of net neutrality here in the United States.

When you see talking babies for a financial services campaign, you're almost certain to forget about those evil bankers on Wall Street. Suddenly investing seems innocent and fair again. Similarly when you see young, smart, curious kids in an ad for an oil company. These kids wouldn't destroy the planet. Look at them, they're too adorable to engage in such anti human behavior. We're saved!

Normally this "Whitney Houston children are our future crap" would be a rather obvious, almost hackneyed strategy. But given our current circumstances, the optimistic push for a promising future starring our purest assets seems refreshing and rather comforting.

Cisco has a spot about kids in high-school video-communicating in real time with Chinese students on the other side of the world. Welcome to the future of global relations. Sure American and Chinese grown-ups in the present can't see eye to eye on most matters, a recent poll suggested that a majority of Americans now see China as their main threat, but why dwell on that when there's a harmonious future to look forward to. Look at all those cute, happy faces.

Indeed so, but if you look closer, you'll notice the Chinese kids are laughing extra loud. Maybe it's the MSG. And maybe it's because they know that their American counterparts will soon owe them a trillion dollars.