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Grade 7 Unit 2 EA 1
We Are What We Buy
We all love new things: jackets, shirts, shoes, smartphones and apps. Who
doesn’t feel good when they have the latest and the greatest thing that draws the
attention and admiration of our peers? But, why do teens especially feel so good and
how do they know what product was going to make them feel so good? Advertisers.
The modern American child is clearly a target for companies seeking to make more and
more money from kids who constantly want more and more stuff. But advertisers fail to
acknowledge the harm they are doing to children and our society, and it is clear that
advertising to children and teens unfairly takes advantage of their inability to identify
when and how they are being manipulated.
Marketing and persuasive techniques are powerful tools for convincing a child
that he or she absolutely needs a product. More and more, marketers are working to
find a place in the mind of children because, according to the USA TODAY article,
“Marketing to kids gets more savvy with new technologies,” kids influence on spending
totals $1.12 trillion. This is why advertisers seek to influence children. Furthermore, as
noted in “Facts about Marketing to Children” from The Center for the New American
Dream, in 1983, prior to the federal deregulation of marketing in media, advertisers
spent $100 million on television ads targeting children. In contrast, by 2006, 22 years
after deregulation, that amount had grown to $40 billion; the documentary Consuming
Kids: The Commercialization of Kids notes that that is an 852% increase. Companies
employ professional researchers and child psychologists to help create their marketing
strategies. The internet is the newest advertising frontier and even uses the strategy of
employing children to market to other unsuspecting children at sleep-overs and during
school. In addition, the USA TODAY article also describes how 77kids by American
Eagle and Webkinz encourage students to download their own image and see
themselves as glamorous rock stars, in the products, or “sharing” with friends online. All
of these modern techniques bombard a child with advertising and are often take place in
an environment where parents aren’t supervising their children. Undoubtedly, these
powerful companies can manipulate youth easily in everyday life.
Although everyone values freedom of speech, concern about the overwhelming
amount of advertising directed at children comes from both psychologists and parents.
Psychologists point out that the “media blitz” targets what is known to be a vulnerable
group because children lack the ability to “discern when they are being manipulated.”
That means that unlike adults, children are being sucked in unknowingly to believe the
messages advertisers create. Their mind is being changed without knowing it – adults at
least are aware that companies are trying to get them to buy or believe something. Kids
simply can’t understand what’s happening to them. As part of the new media blitz, not
only are children being advertised to without parents’ knowledge, like at sleepovers, but
they are also being marketed to in places that are traditionally marketing free: schools,
daycares, and homes. In an American Psychologists Association article, “Driving Teen
Egos – and buying – through ‘branding’” a psychologist who supports regulating
advertising to teens, Allen D. Kanner, PhD, points out that children suffer because “The
message that doesn't reach teens is that what is important is ‘how you think, what you
like...and who you are” rather than what and how much stuff you have. This constant
need for social status invades youths on social media every day. Never ending imagery
of who to be can have damaging effects on a child’s physique. In the same article,
Margo Maine, PhD, who works with girls with eating disorders, mentions the effects on
girls especially: “Teenage girls spend over $9 billion on makeup and skin products alone,
an example of advertisers successfully selling the ‘quick fix,’ she says. But that kind of
purchase robs them of self-determination, self-awareness and self-esteem.” Because so
much advertising takes place apart from parent supervision, children seek to impress
their peers and determine their sense of identity through products alone. While kids
used to see their future selves as someone with a career like firefighter, lawyer, doctor or
teacher, they now just see themselves in the future as someone with money and with
lots and lots of stuff. Clearly, though, in the end, the only winners are the corporations
profiting from manipulating unknowing children.
Attempts have been made to get the government to regulate advertising with little
success. Some psychologists have tried to work within their own profession to protect
younger and younger children. For instance, in an APA article titled “Advertising to
children: is it ethical?” Rebecca Clay believes that psychologists who help corporations
devise strategies that target children are being unethical. According to Clay, “marketing
to children [is] a violation of APA's mission of mitigating human suffering, improving the
condition of both individuals and society, and helping the public develop informed
judgments.” Psychologists need to remember that children are impressionable. By
helping corporations negatively influence children, they are taking an innocence away
that cannot be replaced. As a result, marketers now seek ways to influence consumer
choices as early as the womb and during the first few years of life – and they even
scientifically study how to do it.
All in all, parents are left trying to find ways to avoid the amount of advertising
their children are exposed to and to develop their children’s healthy sense of self, and
educate their children as best they can, because clearly advertisers are unfairly taking
advantage of children and teens by any means necessary. Advertisers know that the
earlier a child identifies with a product, the longer that child is spending money on that
product. We are known as the Land of the Free, but all companies seem to care about
is our freedom to buy more and more products.