When our kids were super young and I was in an especially frugal mood, I canceled our cable service and bought an antenna for our television. I figured that with the money we would save on cable, the antenna would pay for itself in short order. The problem is, it didn’t work very well. We could only pick up a handful of channels, including just one kids’ channel. While it carried several shows our kids liked to watch, it also ran the oddest, most age-inappropriate commercials.
After watching one such commercial on a Saturday morning, Jonathan, who was four at the time, walked into the kitchen where I was making breakfast and asked very earnestly, “Daddy, do you need cash right now?” It was exactly what he had just heard a celebrity spokesperson ask on a commercial for a payday lender. A payday lender! On a kids’ channel! Reassured by my response that no, I did not “need cash right now,” he headed back to the couch.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children ages seven and younger “have limited ability to understand the persuasive intent (ie, that someone else is trying to change their thoughts and behavior) of the advertiser.” In other words, most young kids think commercials are just other programs and believe their messages are true.
With advertising taking on ever more subtle forms, the AAP says that even older kids, including teenagers, “often are not able to resist it when it is embedded within trusted social networks, encouraged by celebrity influencers, or delivered next to personalized content.” (Radesky et al., “Digital Advertising to Children.”)
This article will give you a feel for just how sophisticated, pervasive, and effective marketing has become. It will demonstrate how successful marketers are at shaping the aspirations and behavior of all of us, including our kids. And it will equip you with ideas to help your children successfully navigate our marketing-saturated world.
In Louisville, Kentucky, where my family now lives, there’s a United Soccer League Championship team, Louisville City FC. Don’t tell them that they’re a notch below major-league soccer. They play at a high level, and they utilize equally big-league marketing tactics. At a recent game, almost every pause on the pitch was filled by a promotional pitch. Every yellow card, player substitution, and corner kick—and even the announcement about how many fans were in attendance that night—was “brought to you by . . .” some sponsor.
Thankfully, they drew the line at injuries, apparently recognizing that it would be bad form to have a deep-voiced announcer telling the crowd, “This injury time-out is brought to you by . . .” while a player writhed in pain on the field.
The day after the game, while filling our car with gasoline, the small screen on the pump’s credit-card reader encouraged me to sign up for a membership rewards program while a larger, full color screen built into the pump blared commercials for a restaurant and an insurance company. Looking across the street, I saw ads clinging to the side of a fence that enclosed a high-school sports field.
Today, everywhere we turn we see or hear advertising messages, and so do our kids. They’re woven into the storylines of shows, movies, and video games. Ads or brand logos are on school scoreboards, school uniforms, and even some school buses. They’re all over social media, and they follow us around every site we visit online.
Plenty of marketing messages seem innocent enough. Okay, so this restaurant has a new chicken sandwich. Collectively, however, they send a message that isn’t so innocent, one that isn’t helpful in our quest to manage money well or raise the next generation of wise money managers. Advertising dates back hundreds of years. Some of it started out as simple text notifications. No, not that type of text, but small blocks of simple, factual copy in a newspaper or flyer that told people what products were available where. That began to change in the early 1900s when marketers discovered how to use psychology to sell. With the advent of mass production came the need for new ways to advertise.
The overarching marketing message that emerged was what religion historian Joseph Haroutunian described as “being through having.” (William Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 149. We are what we own. It was around that time that the word consumer came into popular use. Earlier, people had been referred to as citizens or workers. Today, the word consumer is used so often you probably don’t give it a second thought. We hear about consumer spending, consumer sentiment, consumer confidence. It may seem like no big deal.
However, to consume literally means to destroy, use up, or spend wastefully. How’s that working out for us?
Consumer isn’t just a word; it’s a worldview marked by three guiding beliefs:
1. Life is about me— my comfort, my pleasure, my happiness.
2. Happiness is found in money and what it can buy.
3. Life is a competition, a quest for more.
Of course, you and I would not describe our lives’ purposes that way. But those are the purposes promoted in our consumer culture. They’re largely about fostering a sense of discontent—a sense that I don’t have enough, that I’m not enough. And if we don’t notice what’s going on, we can find ourselves buying in to a greater degree than we realize. While there is no single marketing wizard behind a curtain somewhere pulling levers, our consumer culture holds enormous sway over our lives. It influences how we think about ourselves, what’s important to us, what we long for and aspire to, and how we use our time and money. And that culture gets to work on our kids at a surprisingly early age.
The post Did You Know Our Kids are Growing Up as a Target Market? appeared first on Focus on the Family.
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After watching one such commercial on a Saturday morning, Jonathan, who was four at the time, walked into the kitchen where I was making breakfast and asked very earnestly, “Daddy, do you need cash right now?” It was exactly what he had just heard a celebrity spokesperson ask on a commercial for a payday lender. A payday lender! On a kids’ channel! Reassured by my response that no, I did not “need cash right now,” he headed back to the couch.
Impact of Advertising on Young Children’s Minds
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children ages seven and younger “have limited ability to understand the persuasive intent (ie, that someone else is trying to change their thoughts and behavior) of the advertiser.” In other words, most young kids think commercials are just other programs and believe their messages are true.
With advertising taking on ever more subtle forms, the AAP says that even older kids, including teenagers, “often are not able to resist it when it is embedded within trusted social networks, encouraged by celebrity influencers, or delivered next to personalized content.” (Radesky et al., “Digital Advertising to Children.”)
Navigating the Marketing-Saturated World for Kids
This article will give you a feel for just how sophisticated, pervasive, and effective marketing has become. It will demonstrate how successful marketers are at shaping the aspirations and behavior of all of us, including our kids. And it will equip you with ideas to help your children successfully navigate our marketing-saturated world.
In Louisville, Kentucky, where my family now lives, there’s a United Soccer League Championship team, Louisville City FC. Don’t tell them that they’re a notch below major-league soccer. They play at a high level, and they utilize equally big-league marketing tactics. At a recent game, almost every pause on the pitch was filled by a promotional pitch. Every yellow card, player substitution, and corner kick—and even the announcement about how many fans were in attendance that night—was “brought to you by . . .” some sponsor.
Thankfully, they drew the line at injuries, apparently recognizing that it would be bad form to have a deep-voiced announcer telling the crowd, “This injury time-out is brought to you by . . .” while a player writhed in pain on the field.
The day after the game, while filling our car with gasoline, the small screen on the pump’s credit-card reader encouraged me to sign up for a membership rewards program while a larger, full color screen built into the pump blared commercials for a restaurant and an insurance company. Looking across the street, I saw ads clinging to the side of a fence that enclosed a high-school sports field.
Today, everywhere we turn we see or hear advertising messages, and so do our kids. They’re woven into the storylines of shows, movies, and video games. Ads or brand logos are on school scoreboards, school uniforms, and even some school buses. They’re all over social media, and they follow us around every site we visit online.
Children’s Exposure to Inappropriate Ads
Plenty of marketing messages seem innocent enough. Okay, so this restaurant has a new chicken sandwich. Collectively, however, they send a message that isn’t so innocent, one that isn’t helpful in our quest to manage money well or raise the next generation of wise money managers. Advertising dates back hundreds of years. Some of it started out as simple text notifications. No, not that type of text, but small blocks of simple, factual copy in a newspaper or flyer that told people what products were available where. That began to change in the early 1900s when marketers discovered how to use psychology to sell. With the advent of mass production came the need for new ways to advertise.
The overarching marketing message that emerged was what religion historian Joseph Haroutunian described as “being through having.” (William Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 149. We are what we own. It was around that time that the word consumer came into popular use. Earlier, people had been referred to as citizens or workers. Today, the word consumer is used so often you probably don’t give it a second thought. We hear about consumer spending, consumer sentiment, consumer confidence. It may seem like no big deal.
However, to consume literally means to destroy, use up, or spend wastefully. How’s that working out for us?
Consumer isn’t just a word; it’s a worldview marked by three guiding beliefs:
1. Life is about me— my comfort, my pleasure, my happiness.
2. Happiness is found in money and what it can buy.
3. Life is a competition, a quest for more.
Helping Kids Resist Persuasive Advertising Tactics
Of course, you and I would not describe our lives’ purposes that way. But those are the purposes promoted in our consumer culture. They’re largely about fostering a sense of discontent—a sense that I don’t have enough, that I’m not enough. And if we don’t notice what’s going on, we can find ourselves buying in to a greater degree than we realize. While there is no single marketing wizard behind a curtain somewhere pulling levers, our consumer culture holds enormous sway over our lives. It influences how we think about ourselves, what’s important to us, what we long for and aspire to, and how we use our time and money. And that culture gets to work on our kids at a surprisingly early age.
The post Did You Know Our Kids are Growing Up as a Target Market? appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...