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 we feel so good and how did we
know what product was going to make us 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. 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. Some of these strategies include 360-degree marketing campaigns that bury
kids in what Michael Rich, MD calls a “media blitz” of over 3000 images per day.
Consuming Kids describes the various blitzes and notes how they are all part of
watching television ads, listening to radio, and playing video games where products are
placed directly in a game. The internet is the newest advertising frontier and even uses
the strategy of employing children to market to other unsuspecting children at sleepovers and during school. 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.
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. 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 selfesteem.” 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 government to regulate advertising with little
success. Some psychologists have tried to work within their own profession to protect
younger and younger children. 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.” But, as seen in Consuming Kids, it seems that when there is money to be
made, the psychologists involved in teaching companies how to gain access to
children’s minds don’t see a problem in what they do. 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.
Parents are left to 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 nothing is stopping companies from
appealing to their children 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.