Parents have been wringing their hands over their children’s
entertainment choices for generations. However, thanks to the proliferation of
electronic media, kids today have an unprecedented amount of exposure to
influences that we might want to avoid.
According to the A.C. Nielson Company,
the average child watches almost seventeen hundred minutes of television per
week. Some studies have found that kids spend as much or more time in front of a
screen than they do playing outside – with unsurprising negative health effects. ising negative health effects.
The quality of the media that kids are consuming is as troubling as the
quantity. And in addition to age-inappropriate and often violent programming,
they watch commercials. According to the Media Awareness Network, the average
North American girl will watch eighty thousand ads before she starts
kindergarten. In the United States, Saturday morning cartoons alone come with
thirty-three commercials per hour. The Maryland-based organization New American
Dream says that advertising directed at children is worth over fifteen billion
dollars annually in the U.S.
And all that advertising has a big influence. A study published in February of
2010 in the journal Psychology & Marketing reported that children as young as
three recognize product brands and what they symbolize. Researcher Bettina
Cornwell, a professor of marketing in sport management at the University of
Michigan, found that kids between the ages of three and five show an “emerging
ability” to use ads to judge which products will be the most “fun” and make them
popular, even though they are unable to read. “Not only do they understand what
the brand is, they understand that this is something they can use in their
day-to-day lives,” says Cornwell.
The Media Awareness Network describes the tools marketers use to target kids and
provides parents with tools to help counteract the ads. On the group’s website,
one marketer is quoted as saying, “We’re relying on the kid to pester the mom to
buy the product, rather than going straight to the mom.”
In spite of these problems, many people believe that television and other
electronic and print media can be powerful entertainment and education tools for
children. Since rules and restrictions aren’t always enforceable and can lead to
unnecessary conflict, here are some things that media literacy experts suggest
parents do to counteract the effect of negative media.
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Watch television, surf the web and play video games with your children. This
will allow you to discuss the ads and other content with them – how it makes
them feel, what the intent of an ad is, what’s fantasy and what’s reality, etc.
-
Educate your kids on the purposes of advertising. For very young kids, a
statement that ads are there to make you want things you don’t need will be
sufficient.
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Make a game out of spotting the tricks of the advertising trade in commercials
and magazine ads.
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Help kids analyze content. Some questions to discuss include: Who created this
message and why? Who profits from it? What techniques are used to attract and
hold attention? What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in
this message? What is omitted and why?
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Help your children learn that using technology is collaborative and social, and
not an isolating solitary activity.
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Talk with young girls about the female body images they see in magazines and on
TV, and give them better role models.
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Set an example in your own life through your media consumption and purchasing
habits.
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Create a family media diary to log how much of different types of media you are
exposing yourselves to. Then discuss whether that is a good thing or not so you
can create guidelines together...for every member of the family.
-
Get outside and play with your kids on a regular basis.
Learn More
Media Awareness Network
Center for Media Literacy
CCFC
Alliance for Childhood
TV-Turnoff Network
Commercial Alert
Don’t Buy It!
Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers Are Stealing the Minds of Your Children
by Daniel Acuff and Robert Reiher (Kaplan Business, 2005)
Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood by Susan Linn (Free Press,
2004)
Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture by Juliet B. Schor (Scribner, 2004)
The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser (MIT Press, 2003)
What Video Games Can Teach Us About Literacy and Learning by James Gee
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2003)
Stealing Innocence: Corporate Culture’s War on Children by Henry A. Giroux
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry A. Giroux (Rowman
and Littlefield, 2001)
Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids by Roy Fox (Praeger, 2000)
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