How impressionable are kids?

From the age of five until I was eight, I seriously believed that Creedance Clearwater Revival’s Down on the Street was the Australian National Anthem. I also used to think Captain Planet was based on true stories and that one day I would meet Nancy Drew.
Parents, I think often take advantage of how impressionable kids are. My parents had me convinced that a toasted cheese sandwich was a very special treat only available when I had demonstrated some extraordinary act of pleasing child behaviour. (Meanwhile back at the ranch, I learnt all too well as a struggling, time poor, finance poor student exactly what this toasted cheese sandwich business was about.)
I also used to think that catch’n’kiss was a dangerous way to catch a deadly disease and that the boogieman (who was also, conveniently for my parents, our neighbour) would really come and get me if I didn’t eat my broccoli.
All this came flooding back to me when I read an article that girls as young as 6 years old are putting themselves on calories controlled diets in a bid to “get skinny”. How impressionable are kids. I was 6 years old twenty years ago, and there was no way I knew what a calories was, nor cared enough to control my consumption of them. I feel like I sound like that bitter man who sits outside the butcher at my local shopping centre, but really – are kids these days growing up too fast?
Or is it not growing up at all, but just a response to environmental stimuli. We are part of that stimuli people, we owe the kids.
And bring back Captain Planet.