To the Editor,

In the several hundred billion dollars spent on advertising each year, American businesses spare no pain to show every living human being with a huge, happy smile while purchasing products and services.

Advertisers, America is not happy. And ironically, it is the business marketing industry that must bear a huge part of the responsibility for this unhappiness. You are feeding the economic, emotional, and social unhappiness that’s weighing individuals and families down.

In case you haven’t noticed, mental health issues are on everyone’s radar these days, except, notably, yours. Americans are not feeling like you say they are feeling. And why is that?

You encourage Americans to delay or disrupt or dissolve college educations for their kids, so they can buy the “goods” and services that weigh down their souls, clutter up their homes, take up their time, and minimize their children’s successes in life, which depend upon the development of their minds.

When are you going to own up to your responsibility for America’s sad faces and your own hypocrisy?

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah