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BORN TO BUY
By Kathy Ceceri

            If holiday time at your house means a rapid upswing in the level of whining for the latest hot item, or a list to Santa that’s longer than your kid is tall, don’t blame your children – blame America’s advertising industry. Marketing researchers have been targeting children for quite a while, going so far as to gather data on how many “asks” it takes for kids to wear parents down to quantify how the “nag factor” or “pester power” figures into a product’s sales strategy. Commercials, print ads, store displays, and product placement in movies, TV shows, and at school all coax and pressure kids into wanting the coolest clothes, games, cereals and even condiments. And anyone from toddlers on up is considered fair game. Not surprisingly, says sociologist Juliet Schor, it’s having a negative effect on the next generation.
            In her 2005 book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Schor details how advertising has changed, how it’s hurting kids, and how parents can pull their children back out of the consumerist vortex before it’s too late. The mother of a son who’s 13 and a daughter who’s 9, Schor knows firsthand how hard it is for parents to fight the prevailing trends, but she believes it’s possible to educate kids and help them make choices that will help them lead happier lives.
            “Parents need to understand that the commercial culture taken as a whole has an impact on kids,” she said in a recent phone interview. “The more exposed they are to it, the bigger the negative effects. It’s a toxic environment for kids. The less of it, the better.”
            Three years ago Schor, a professor at Boston College, surveyed 300 fifth- and sixth-graders in urban and suburban schools about their involvement in consumer culture. She and her students asked the children how much they cared about money, possessions, and brand names, whether they liked to shop and collect things, and if they judged other people by how much stuff they had. What she found was that the kids most immersed in wanting, buying and getting were suffering significantly more social, emotional and even physical problems than other kids – problems like depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, poor parent-child relations, psychosomatic symptoms and obesity.
            This all-encompassing commercial world children find themselves in didn’t arise overnight. As Schor explains, advertisers once aimed their messages at parents, particularly moms, who throughout the 20th century were seen as keeper of the family purse strings. “Builds Strong Bodies 12 ways” and “Choosy Mothers Choose Jif” were slogans designed to convince parents that products met their standards of wholesomeness. While toy and candy commercials were given kid appeal, children remained on the margins of mainstream marketing.
            “That has changed,” Schor writes. “Kids and teens are now the epicenter of American consumer culture.” Through a combination of more relaxed Baby Boomer parenting and busy households where adults can find themselves substituting material goods for the time they don’t have (“guilt money,” Schor calls it), children now participate in or control buying decisions involving everything from food to clothes to entertainment, including such previously non-kid items as cars, electronics, and family vacations.
            “Many parents now believe that their children know more about products and brands than they do, and they rely on that knowledge,” she writes.
            Marketers, whose job is to help companies find the best way to bring their products to potential customers, have jumped on this trend with a vengeance. Schor tells how one of the world’s leading “branding gurus” has said that 80 percent of all global brands now require a “tween strategy” to be successful. Before age two, most kids can recognize company logos and ask for products by brand name. The average first grader, Schor writes, is familiar with over 200 brands, and has already formed attachments and value judgments favoring one over the other.
            Using child development models borrowed from psychology theories that are often woefully out of step with the cultural advances of the last 50 years, advertising aimed at kids promotes a range of negative images. Gender differentiation begins early, and stereotypes about what boys and girls “want” prevail: for boys, it’s power, action and success; for girls, glamour and social acceptance. Ads aimed at both sexes emphasize boys, since it’s believed girls are more willing to follow their male counterparts than vice versa.
            Advertisers also exploit basic human needs, like the need for sensory stimulation, through the use of commercials that massively over stimulate viewers. Cereal and snack commercials using pounding beats, quick edits, and sometimes horrific computer-generated characters or distortions of human actors are common. Another basic human need, for comfort and nurturing, is downplayed in the quest for an environment that’s “edgy” for anyone past preschool.  Even fear (billed as “excitement” in commercials), to some extent, becomes a marketing tool
            At the same time, advertisers have picked up on the worst youth-worshiping aspects of modern life. Anti-adultism is rampant. (As Nickelodeon says, “Kids rule!”)  Parents and teachers are portrayed as nerdy, embarrassing, and repressive. “Empowerment” for kids translates into showing ways a product can be used to annoy adults, whether it’s gross snacks like gummy worms or irritating behavior like squeaking new sneakers on the floor. In 2001, Schor says, the advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi Kid Connection counseled clients that while post-9/11 families were looking for more togetherness, their best move was to continue to go “parent-free” in marketing to tweens.
            “The lesson to kids,” she goes on to explain, “is that it’s the product, not your parent, who’s really on your side.”
            Marketers have taken to using “age compression” – bringing material down to younger and younger children – as a way to enlarge their customer base and build tastes early. The acronym the industry uses to describe this trend, KAGOY, stands for “Kids Are Getting Older Younger,” and it’s seen in the way PBS creates TV shows such as Teletubbies specifically for babies (drawing on the goodwill of what Schor calls their “wholesome halo”) , ads for R-rated movies target 9-year-olds, and “Seventeen” magazine goes after 11-year-old readers. Tweens, a fairly recent term once used to describe the audience of 10 to 12-year-old preteens, now also refers to kindergarteners. The Budweiser Beer frog commercials, Schor notes, are a favorite among 8-year-old boys (see box). And with the rush to embrace adult pleasures comes a reluctance to hold onto childish things.
            “In a telling gesture,” she says, “the toy industry has officially lowered its upper age target from fourteen to ten.”
            One of the scariest developments of modern sales techniques, “viral marketing,” goes beyond surveys and ads, taking both research and product placement right into consumers’ homes. GIA, the Girls Intelligence Agency, is a “very elite” group of 40,000 members that encourages girls to hold slumber parties to introduce toys, films, beauty aids and other products made by GIA clients to their friends. Likewise, Hasbro tried launching a new handheld computer game by recruiting pint-sized trendsetters, so-called “alpha pups.” Marketers interviewed thousands of boys on playgrounds, at arcades and in other public places, asking, “Who’s the coolest kid you know?” until they reached the kid who said, “Me!” More than 1,500 boys were then given 10 units to pass along to their friends, in exchange for a fee of $30. The result of this kind of approach, Schor writes, may be the end of confidence in word-of-mouth recommendations, but that’s not all she’s worried about.
            “An even more serious consequence is the corruption of friends itself,” Schor warns. “Marketers are teaching kids to view their friends as a lucrative resource they can exploit to gain products or money.”
            As Schor describes, marketers have also found that many adults are happy to welcome researchers right into their homes in exchange for token compensation, or the satisfaction of having input into new products. Like anthropologists, these “ethnographers” will observe families using products in their kitchen, bedroom or bath, leading to insights like the discovery that kids will play with shampoo bottles once they’re empty (notice all the toy-shaped shampoo bottles nowadays?) One agency sent six- through nine-year olds wearing headbands that concealed tiny cameras into stores (presumably with their parents) to see where they lingered and what they bought. Private and parochial schools and groups like Boys and Girls Clubs of America have allowed marketers to use their charges to test products, in exchange for cash or other compensation, and one researcher told Schor the adults never asked about the kind of products involved. Kid panels are used extensively by companies like Heinz, Microsoft and MTV.
            Asked what was the most shocking action involving marketing to kids, Schor answered, “The fact that ‘big food’ is pursuing a strategy just like big tobacco. They are flexing their muscles with political power, especially in the White House. They’re making American kids fat and sick, and trying to do it to kids all over the world.”
            Does all this effort pay off for companies? Given the number of marketing and advertising professionals employing these techniques, the answer seems to be “yes.” In her book, Schor concedes that advertisers win kids over by offering them the fantasy of “fun over work” and free rein to do what they like, without adult protection or control. She quotes writer Stephen Kline, who realized that advertisers have always paid more attention to children’s imaginations, daydreams, hero worship, and absurdist humor than educators do. “They recognized that these attributes were the deep roots of children’s culture, which could be employed as effective tools for communicating with them,” she quotes Kline as observing.
            Another measure of advertising’s success is what happens when you take it out of the equation. Schor cites an experiment in California to curtail children’s television viewing. Stanford University researchers found that kids whose viewing time decreased made 70 percent fewer toy requests than those whose TV watching stayed the same. That’s a result many parents would be glad to replicate.
            The good news is that Schor’s study supports the notion that cutting back on consumer involvement, whether through limiting TV, setting guidelines for movie and video game choices, or restricting the household junk food intake, can improve the psychological health of kids who are suffering from depression, anxiety and other problems. She calls for Congress to restrict marketing to kids, especially in schools. And she urges parents to work together to cut down on kids’ exposure to harmful media and advertising, come up with family-oriented entertainment alternatives like parent-child book clubs, neighborhood sporting events, or family movie nights.
            Most importantly, she believes parents should set a good example and teach kids how to resist the lure of popular but unhealthy consumer choices.
            “One thing I do with my kids is talk to them,” she said. “When my son wanted a video game player, I told him to read the research.” Did he? No, she admitted, but he did stop asking for it as well. Schor said she thinks Krishna realized he doesn’t like the way playing addicting games makes him feel.
            “He plays computer games, although we just went through a moratorium,” she explained, saying she pointed out the violent behavior and addictiveness of the medium. “He feels that, he’s more irritable, gets bored more easily.”
            She disagrees with parents who feel being different is too hard.
            “Just because it’s out there, you don’t have to do it. We’re vegetarians, but meat’s everywhere,” she pointed out. “MTV, Viacom – why should I let them into our lives? You draw your lines where you feel comfortable. It’s OK to limit and restrict.”
            After all, she tells parents, “You feel that way about illegal drugs There are pockets of people who are resisting this.”
            The Center for a New American Dream has more information on Schor’s book (she’s a board member) and tips for helping kids resist consumer messages. Go to www.newdream.org.

Related Review –Made You Look by John Ceceri, age 11

            Made You Look by Shari Graydon is a very informative book about advertising and kids. This book tells you how ads started and how they work. It also explains the dangers of ads like beer commercials that have characters to get kids to pay attention to them. It says some magazines, such as Lego Magazine, are really just ads for the company. Some companies make their products seem very cool, using different camera angles to make them look bigger and better, when in reality they’re not that exciting. Coke and Pepsi were even fined for causing environmental damage when they painted ads on the Himalayan Mountains in India. The book tells kids what to do if they think an ad is inappropriate (writing a letter to the company is more effective then a phone call or an e-mail). I liked how the author explained everything carefully and gave a lot of details. It was easy to read. The illustrations by Warren Clark are sometimes funny. It’s good for kids 10 and up. Published by Annick Press in 2003. The price is $14.95.

Copyright 2005 Kathy Ceceri

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