After watching the video in class, “Consuming Kids”, a sense of disbelief, astonishment, and disgust came over me. I learned a lot of interesting things about advertising and lengths that advertisers will go to have beneficial effects for the company on children.
The video shows just how consumed we truly are with media whether we’re aware of it or not. It is all around us. I always knew this but I guess I never realized the extent to which this is true. By the commercialization of childhood, persuasion strategies are used to appeal to children in ways I would have never even thought of.
There is the use of the obvious market research method, associating happiness with owning the product the company is trying to sell. But aside from this open persuasive technique, there are others. Researches are precise enough, not only to know to use round shapes because they attract five year olds, but they also know how many times a child blinks per minute. They try to use strategically planned sounds and colors in advertisements to actually hold the child’s attention enough to keep him him/her from blinking. I found a site that tries to teach children about some of these media “tricks.”
Though these techniques are a bit extreme, they can still be considered ethical; but this is not always the case. Researches go even farther than this and actually stalk children, whether it be around a store, at school with their friends, or even at their own home in the bathroom. Researchers then report their behavior back to their clients so they can decide how to sell their product. This does not seem appropriate or ethical at all to me.
Deregulation has really played a role in all of this. After the Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act of 1980, advertising targeting children has grown 35% each year. They try to insinuate their product or brand into the fabric of a child’s life. They call it “cradle to the grave” because they figure if they can appeal to them as children, and gain them as consumers when they are young, then they will have them all throughout their lives.
I think it is scary to know that advertisers have this much power over the public, and over children especially. All the parental supervision in the world cannot prevent a child from seeing an advertisement that is visually appealing and stimulating to them.
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