INTRODUCTION
Children have long been a target of consumerism and marketing. Their young, immature minds are taken as the ideal grounds for expanding businesses and victimizing them into becoming the future consumers and materialists of the country. However, it is true that marketing to children is a gigantic social problem which also encompasses ethical and moral standards of individuals as well as of the growing children. There are many factors which promote child consumerism and there are several repercussions of this action. Children are individuals who need to be kept away from these environmental pressures and be allowed to grow into people that have self-constructed values and understand the meaning of the world around them. A lot has changed since the introduction of media into the world- taking into account all kinds of media, such as print media, television, music, video games, cell phones (all kinds of electronic media) and most importantly, the internet.
EXPOSURE TO MEDIA
As shown in the documentary titled Consuming Kids, children have been exposed to consumerism and marketing since the 1920s and onwards and the impact of this industry has only grown since then. Children are tiny humans that can easily become addicted to anything they are attracted to and endorsed to follow. It is quite hard for them to avert their attention or be prevented from following a certain interest they have set their minds to. It makes it equally difficult for them to give up that trend as they grow up, and their addiction grows stronger. Firstly, children are being programmed to become loyal to certain brands and to uphold that trend for the rest of their lives. This becomes a societal concern when these very children grow up to become materialistic and superficial individuals who max out their credit cards buying extremely expensive things which tend to make them happy. Consumer culture only grows with the development of technology, and young girls and boys become addicted to the kind of things they wish to purchase so they can remain happy and content.
As the advertising and commercialism industry wanted to expand and it demanded attracting customer loyalty, it targeted children as the main audience that could serve this purpose. According to Elizabeth Preston and Cindy L. White, branding is one of the key processes of media marketing where the children are lulled through advertising into becoming consumers who have a preference for one specific brand (Preston and White, 2004, p.116). From consumer items such as toys like stuffed animals to action figures to Barbies and playhouses, everything is now advertised and marketed very keenly so as to ensure that children will be attracted to it no matter what its market price or utility. Undoubtedly, the ethical and moral concerns are not kept into view because had they been considered, the aim would not have been to instill the ‘nag factor’ into marketing.
CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
Children as consumers are practically unaware of the fact that they are being targeted as individuals that need to buy a specific product that is being endorsed to emphatically at a particular time in their lives. The reason why children have been targeted by advertisers and marketers is because they are influential creatures in convincing their parents into buying the thing they want. Be it a toy, cereal, clothing or accessories, little boys and girls know exactly how to take their parents to the edge of their patience and convince them into buying what they want to get. They will throw tantrums in shopping malls, nag their parents forcefully and ask them over and over again until they give in and buy them what they want. It has been reported that a child will ask their parent for a thing repeatedly about nine times before they get what they wished for (Jougla, 2015). This is unhealthy behavior and raises serious societal concerns as to where children’s behavior is going and how they lose the sense of what is important and what is not just for the sake of something they want to purchase only because their minds have been rewired to ask for them. It is not just one child, however; families have multiple numbers of children and this habit of nagging their parents can be very frustrating for the parents as well as other members of the family who find this behavior unreasonable. Marketers and advertisers take advantage of this very behavior and force consumerism onto young children.
It is not only media, but it is also giant food chains and television networks that have taken advantage of this behavior in children. Nickelodeon shows are a children’s favorite. Hence the channel has a full range of advertisers after it which promote one product after the other. Moreover, they are after the notion of branding. For example, children are shown a commercial of the luxury car, Porsche and how a child goes to the showroom himself to check the car and then leaves after saying, ‘I will see you in twenty years.’ This is a mindset that is filtered off and projected toward children that expensive goods are equivalent to a necessity in life (Jougla, 2015). Similarly, they are shown how their most favorite cartoons or characters are now available as happy meal toys, and they need to eat at McDonalds so they can get their hands on them. Children will then insist on eating fast food and refuse to have homemade meals thus which promotes the unhealthy eating habits. Society then sees children developing diseases, becoming obese and intolerant and anxious as they grow up. Although they have the things, they need, yet they become more frustrated with what they have and are unhappy even with the material needs they had wished for (Cai and Zhao, 2010, p.135).
As far as the influence of media is concerned, today television has been replaced with the internet. About twenty million children of ages twelve and under are found using the internet (Cai and Zhao, 2010, p.135). While children use the internet to surf the Web and play video games, they are equally exposed to advertisers preying on their juvenile minds and attracting them towards using the internet for consumerism. While playing, children are exposed to online advertising, which uses their favorite TV characters to reach out to them. Moreover, there are such games and toys available in the market that allow children to scratch a code and become part of a virtual world on the internet where they can shop and purchase items according to their liking. This promotes a very early behavior of branding and consumerism where children learn to become independent at such an early age where they are generally unsure of the concept of buy and sell. Children are less likely to resist their temptation and cannot give in to their urge of purchase as compared to adults. Advertising on the internet is free of cues, and it is spontaneous, such as pop-up ads when surfing the Web or advertisements that appear alongside websites and pages when they are playing a game or the like (An and Hannah, 2013, p.656). On television, children are programmed for cues as to when a commercial will appear. It is during their favorite program, and they are at times, more eager to watch the advertisement rather than the actual program. This is one way of how their young minds are processed and being designed to comply with materialism.
Marketing is also a major social problem because of how it affects the growth and maturity of young children. It is believed that young children now grow in the order of child, ‘tween’ and teen. The ‘tween’ has become an in-between time period in the life of a child which is usually between the ages of 6 to 12 years (Jougla, 2015). Children are being taught to give in to materialism which means their childhood is being taken away from them. The media exposes them to cartoons and life-like figures for girls such as Bratz, Barbie, and for boys in the form of action figures and guns and weapons. The basic message that is being given out by these figures is that it is important for a child to grow up into an adult or a teenager as fast as they can. This is disastrous for their mental growth. Girls are the main target of this phenomenon. Young girls of ages 5 and onwards dress up as models and glamorous girls which is probably something quite beyond their years; physically and emotionally. The problem with this is forgetting that they are just children and not adults, and their focus needs to be things other than getting manicures and wearing skimpy, revealing clothing just because a TV character wore them. According to psychologists, while children might feel they ‘fit in’ more than the others, there are greater chances that they are not emotionally ready for the attention they are going to attract once they go outdoors (Jougla, 2015).
Furthermore, once advertisers figure out that children are now taking an interest in fashion and teenage items, they start enforcing materialism even harder than before. This means that the children that were once happy with wearing the clothes they got from regular stores now wish to purchase items from expensive, luxury designer shops and nothing less- mainly because they saw a Disney character do the same and they want an outfit from that same store. While taming such interests is completely unnecessary, it is disastrous for the mental health of a child. Growing up with such tastes only leads to the development of complexes, depression, and anxiety. Research and studies have found that children with all such needs fulfilled are generally suffering from behavioral disorders as compared to those who do not have them (Preston and White, 2004, p. 117).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Consumerism has a trickle-down effect on society- children stop going outdoors to play once they have electronic media at their disposal; their world revolves around the X-box or Playstation and they refuse to enjoy the pleasure of outdoors games with friends. Thus difficulty in paying attention at school, becoming overweight and having a bleaker outlook at life is one of the many repercussions of becoming victim to consumerism. It is disastrous for society since children are the future and the country needs stricter laws and control over advertising for children.
Work Cited
An Soontai and Kang, Hannah. (2013). Do online ad breaks clearly tell kids that advergames
are advertisements that intend to sell things? International Journal of Advertising. Vol 32 No. 4. 655-678.
Cai, Xaiomi, and Zhao, Xiaoquan. (2010). Online Advertising Practices on children’s websites.
Jougla, Coralie. (2015, May 1). Consuming kids Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjel16VcIWw
Preston, Elizabeth and White, Cindy L. (2004). Commodifying Kids: Branded identities and the
selling of Ad-space on Kid’s networks. Communication Quarterly. Vol 5. 115-128.
