Hello friends! I have been reading a fascinating book lately called Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us – and How to Fight Back
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However, in addition to making me sick, one part of the book in particular made me MAD. Not mad at the authors, but mad at outrageous marketers. Here is a quote from the passage in the book that really sparked my ire.
Marketers openly refer to parents as “gatekeepers,” whose efforts to protect their children from commercial pressures must be circumvented so that those children, in the rather chilling terms used by the marketers, can be “captured, owned, and branded.”
That passage really shocked and upset me. As the mother of a four month old baby, it angers me to know that marketers think of my child (and all children) in this way. The authors went on to describe the details of a 1996 marketing conference (held where else but Disney World?) where speaker after speaker advised would-be advertisers that the way to “capture” children is to use the following strategy in their advertising.
Portray parents as fuddy-duddies who aren’t smart enough to realize their children’s need for the products being sold. It’s a proven technique for neutralizing parental influence in the market-child relationship.
Excuse me? Are they kidding????!? So I thought I would do some research and then write an article to include some suggestions on how to minimize the effect of advertising on children. I started where you might expect, with a Google search. Chirp chirp. Can you hear those crickets chirping? Yeah, I found… well, not nothing, but not as much as I was hoping to find.
Kids and Advertising
I did, however, come across a plethora of fascinating facts about media influence on children. Before I get into it though, I’ll tell you why I think this has a huge impact on family finance. Put simply, it’s because children can have enormous influence on parents’ spending habits. Whether it’s the cereal they decide is their favorite or the toys they request for Christmas, little ones can have a big influence on family spending. And marketers totally know it.
One of the first articles that I came across on my web search was this British article from 2002. They analyzed 83 early school-age children and specifically looked at their letters to Father Christmas, or Santa Claus. They noticed that children who watched more television were noted to request more toys from Father Christmas, and they also requested more specific brands.
They compared the group of British children to a similar group of children from Sweden, where marketers are prohibited from targeting advertising at young children. Not surprisingly, they noticed that the Swedish children asked Father Christmas for fewer toys. Let me repeat that: It is actually illegal for marketers in Sweden (and several other western European nations) to target advertising at young children. Wow. How different would that be?
According to another article, US children typically view at least 40,000 advertisements per year. That same article also gave some shocking information regarding exactly why marketing to children is such big business.
In 2002, US four- to twelve-year-olds spent $30 billion. American twelve- to seventeen-year-olds spent $112.5 billion in 2003.
Isn’t that absurd? That article reports that younger kids tend to receive most of their income from their parents, while teenagers tend to receive more of their income from part-time jobs. But check out this fascinating statistic: In 2003, 33 million US teens aged twelve to nineteen each spent about $103 per week.
$103 per week seems like an awful lot to me! And that was over ten years ago- what is it now? I guess teenagers who drive might be buying their own gas (and paying for their own car payment, insurance, etc.), but still. What else are they spending that money on? I’m hoping that the older kids with cars (and hopefully jobs) are really skewing that statistic upward, because the thought of a twelve-year-old blowing through that much cash every week seems pretty crazy.
So what can be done? Like I said, I did not find as much as I wanted to that seemed to address exactly how to help children be less susceptible to advertising. When I think about it, I guess it makes sense. After all- it’s not like any advertisers would ever sponsor research on that topic. 🙂 Also, advertising is incredibly common in the US- it’s everywhere from TV to billboards to internet to even the sides of the school bus in some communities! That’s pretty hard to avoid.
Limit TV Time
However, the American Academy of Pediatrics website and research provided helpful info. Pediatricians typically recommend no more than two hours of “screen time” per day. Pediatricians are concerned not just about the influence of advertising, but they are also concerned that too much TV time can lead to “violent or aggressive behavior, substance use, sexual activity, obesity, poor body image, and decreased school performance.” Yikes!
Ok, so limiting TV time is a good thing for multiple reasons.
Educate Your Kids About Advertising
In addition to limiting TV time, there are some other things that parents can do to help here. This great article describes steps parents can take to “arm kids with critical thinking skills” regarding commercials they see on TV. Some of their suggestions are to help children identify advertising (since young kids in particular may not even be aware of the difference between an ad and regular TV) and explain the purpose of advertising (including the fact that commercials are someone’s opinion, not necessarily facts).
The authors also recommend challenge kids to analyze ads for themselves, and talk to them about the hidden messages that certain ads may be trying to send to those who view them. I think that these things are especially important to think about as we head into the holiday season and our television stations and newspapers are soon to be inundated with advertisements for various products. Talk about consumerism gone mad!
Give Kids Strategies For Determining What Makes Their Hearts Happy
Lastly, one of my all-time favorite blog posts was written last December by my friend Shannon who blogs over at The Heavy Purse. In this incredibly helpful post, Shannon shares how to help your child create their holiday gift wish list. I think she offers an excellent strategy here to help children narrow down their wish list, AND it helps us as parents to figure out what they TRULY want, and not just every spur-of-the-moment “Oh I want that!” when the ad comes on TV.
What do you think? Parents, do you have any other tips for helping to minimize the effect of advertising on your children? Is anyone else now thinking of getting rid of their TV or moving to Sweden? (Just kidding… I think).
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My child was obsessed with McDonalds starting at age two. The funny thing is, I think she had only been there once or maybe twice at that point. I wholeheartedly believe she is being marketed to. Right now she wants an American Girl doll and a Wii.
It’s so pervasive in this culture. I do think it’s kind of funny that she loves McDs even though she’s only been there twice. THAT’S advertising!!
I’m a teacher and it’s mind-blowing how much cash these pre-teens carry around with them! No wonder they’re spending so much on stuff! As for TV time, definitely needs to be limited. Oh, and video games. Now a days, kids play video games probably more than watch TV (especially middle school age-range) and advertising happens there, too. It boils down to parents getting involved and limiting these devices as well as discussing the purpose of advertising. I think Sweden is on to something.
I think you are very correct that parents need to get involved. However, my fear is that in too many homes across America, thousands upon thousands of hours of TV are being watched by children every year and it contributes to all sorts of problems. As with most things, it is up to the individual to take action.
It is hard when you see how marketers look at kids and us, gatekeepers. Kids are a huge industry and parents have a hard time telling kids “no” and marketers know it. They also feed into parent’s fears of being failures if they have to say “no”. So guess what – we say “yes”. It’s crazy. I do think Sweden is on to something! We try to minimize the girls TV time but these days it is almost impossible to completely protect them from advertisers. It’s why I think it’s so important to teach kids how to use their money wisely, because advertising isn’t going to go away, so we need to be able separate good marketing from actual desire. And thank you for the mention – I’m so glad you found that post helpful! My family appreciates that the girls have lists for them every year too. 🙂
You are so right- in the US it is impossible to completely protect from advertisers. This is definitely another reason to teach good personal finance skills from a young age. But I think that limiting TV time is going to be pretty important too!
Don’t even get me started on this, it DRIVES ME NUTS. Know what’s also terrible that you’ll soon discover, if you haven’t already? The genderization of toys. My daughter loves Thomas the train, apparently that’s against social norm, fawk.
Oh yay- someone else who finds this as outrageous as I do!!! I can’t believe that it’s allowed to be this bad- that’s capitalism for you I guess. We are definitely planning to limit TV time for our little miss! I haven’t experiences the gender stereotyping much yet, but I’m sure that one’s coming too.
Hey, guess what? You’re the parent and you make the rules! Kids watch TV if you allow them to. They say “I WANT” and get under your skin if you let them. And they scream and pout and cry and throw tantrums if you show them you’re willing to put up with it (even more if you ever give in).
But the advertisers have it 100% right: as the parent, you ARE the gatekeeper. And it’s your responsibility to bring that snot-nosed, bug-eating rug-rat up with the best damn morals you can, and educate them well enough to see beyond the shiny crap on TV. I agree that it would be great if there were rules in place to prevent TV targeting kids, but in the end they’re your responsibility. And if you don’t like the way they turn out, there’s only one person to blame.
I’m totally with you that parents have the ultimate responsibility, Myles. But in my opinion advertisers make it MUCH harder on parents- intentionally, with only their own gain in mind. I think you’ll see when you have kids that it really makes you evaluate the world around you with a much more critical eye, and question things you’d never bothered to question before. I grew up in this country, so ads have been a part of my life since childhood. But looking at it through the eyes of a parent I see the harm there that I never saw before.
The key is to start educating your children at a very young age. I don’t experience much of the momma can you buy me that syndrome from my daughter because I have consistently trained her to be grateful for what she already has. It sounds crazy that a 8 year old would get that, but trust me they can. She is accustomed to waiting for Christmas to get special gifts, so she mentally comes up with her 3 item list each year and I go out of my way to make it happen. I also make it a point to ensure she has other stimulations like playground time, playdate, and extracurricular activities to keep her busy. Great post….and congrats and the baby boy!
Thanks Petrish! My hubby and I have already been spending a lot of time talking about how are we going to handle this, and one of the things we’ve talked about a lot is keeping busy with outdoors activities, etc. We are really active people, so that should not be hard for us! I LOVE that you’ve instilled a gratitude mindset in your daughter from such a young age- I hope to do the same!!
We got rid of our tv in 2013, but our son is an adult now, so that probably doesn’t count. I’m guessing a move to Sweden would be pointless now too.
I know that when he was little he was easily swayed by cartoons and commercials. He was an only child, so we, and the grandparents, definitely overindulged him. He totally went in the other direction around the age of 18, so who knows what will happen with his children. Hopefully, the hubby and I will honor he and his wife’s wishes.
I am hoping we get to do a little bit of spoiling, though! 🙂
That’s the fun part about being a grandparent, right? Yeah, probably no need to move to Sweden at this point 🙂
These are interesting suggestions.One thing I noticed though is that all of these rely on preventing ads getting to your child. My experience is that it works better when you teach your child not to be suseptible to the ads. We raised our son to be ‘consumption indiferent’ but not by denial but by teaching him how to make choices. Now at 13 he claims that he doesn’t want anything for Christmas (he says that he has everything he wants and needs).
I agree that education is key- that’s why I mentioned various ways to educate kids about advertising. Although I do think that limiting TV time is good for a multitude of reasons!
Wow. Just…wow. I have to say I’m glad my kids are grown… When they were young we did limit their TV and video game time quite a bit — not because we were worried about the advertisements but because I wanted them to be outdoors playing instead of being couch potatoes.
Great article!
That’s another good reason to limit TV time!
This book sounds interesting….I’m going to have to check it out. It’s interesting how other parts of world view advertising. My wife went to college in Ireland and when we married last year some of her Irish friends came over and stayed with us. We were watching TV and a commercial came on that compared a Ford truck to GM. They were surprised because over in Ireland (and I assume the EU) a commercial cannot directly compare two competitors products. I found this fascinating.
Huh, that’s really interesting. After doing a lot of reading and research for this post, I think I’d really like to go travel to various European countries to check out what TV is like- some of those countries have completely different philosophies on this than the US.
Wow, it’s kind of terrifying to see how marketers view kids and parents! I think we’re all susceptible to marketing (after all, they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work) but I don’t like the idea of marketers trying to circumvent parents and lure kids. I think you have the right idea with limiting TV and educating kids about why commercials say and promise what they do.
It’s really disturbing, isn’t it? I honestly think this is going to be one of the biggest challenges of raising a child of this generation in the US. I know we will definitely do our best to educate our daughter about commercialism… but there are SO MANY other forces at work here including the influence of other children. I think we’ve definitely got our work cut out for us as parents.