Kids change you. Before my son was born two years ago, I was a reluctant consumer, at best. Now, I shop with an intensity that would make Mila Mulroney blush. I know why the economy keeps booming – it’s because I keep buying stuff, from disposable diapers to Raffi CDs, both necessary evils.

My transformation will not surprise the authors of Kidfluence, a new, informative and unintentionally disturbing book. In Kidfluence, Anne Sutherland, a marketing consultant, and Beth Thompson, a journalist, provide plenty of statistics, studies, sidebars, and anecdotal evidence to back up their contention that, like it or not, kids play an increasingly important role in the marketplace. Candies, Barbie dolls, and soft drinks add up. So does the impact kids have on their parents’ purchase of everything from cereal to cars.

Today’s kids, Sutherland and Thompson write, are “born expecting extras and conveniences” – in a word, more. The numbers don’t lie and, in the world of target markets and consumer trends, numbers can’t be ignored.

In North America, kids’ pocket money accounts for $115-billion a year. Multiply that by at least five times if you add in the influence that kids exert on what their parents buy. Teens in the U.S. spend between $53 and $125 a week; 10% have their own credit cards. What’s more, teens and tweens, raised in cyberspace, can now get their own Internet line of credit.

Kidfluence illustrates how seriously the economic impact of Generation Y – everyone under 18 – is taken in the business world. Marketing experts and cognitive anthropologists are studying things like “the nag factor” and “pester power.” Researchers are even analyzing letters to Santa Claus to see if Christmas wishes single out brand names. Over 85% do.

It’s a brave new world for some, a scary one for others. While Kidfluence presents some dissenting voices on the dangers of turning kids into rabid consumers, Sutherland and Thompson are mostly neutral on the moral issues that come with seeing a whole generation as a target market. Kidfluence’s point is that kid purchasing power is an economic reality. You can tap into that reality or lose out, but you better accept it.

Still, there’s something chilling about a statement by one analyst in Kidfluence, who justifies all this by saying, “To consume is to be fully alive and to remain alive we must continually consume.” It makes us sound like sharks; or, in the case of our kids, young sharks with pagers, cell phones, and credit lines.