This may just corroborate some of what you already know, but for me it quantified some things and made me aware of some things I hadn’t considered.
“Born to Buy : The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture” (Juliet B. Schor)
What I found most disturbing was the amount of money and effort going into exploiting kids and making them into passive — and later — aggressive consumers. The central idea of the book is that kids are exposed to too many messages and exhortations to buy as a result of unsupervised or unregulated advertising. The amount of time kids watch TV is up but the amount of advertising — especially for non-nutritional foods, violent games, and adult products like alcohol, is way up. Schor presents some frightening details on the link between exposure to Hollywood films and the increased use of alcohol and tobacco through the use of paid product placements in the films.
And she discovered, contrary to her own assumptions, a link between troubled kids — poor self-esteem, poor decision-making skills, and unhealthy attitudes toward family and society — and TV watching/ad exposure. The initial assumption was that troubled kids watched TV, ate poorly, and scratched their materialistic itch to soothe their feelings about themselves, but a study demonstrated that the media messages were causing the other problems.
The last part of the book has a call to action for legislation and policy initiatives we’re unlikely to see, but along with that are some simple steps that every household can take without waiting for government ‘help.’
- Turn off the TV and put it somewhere that makes it inconvenient for everyone to watch it
- Model good behavior — don’t tell the kid he can’t have expensive things while you shop at Tiffany & Co.
- Go outside: it will go you both good
- If you have to be inside, play boardgames, paint, draw, read, write, tell stories: live
One of my favorite arguments — the need for Slow Food, among other things — makes an appearance, as well, as we see a generation of kids who have never tasted anything but sugary/salty snacks and who rather eat a blue snack than a green fruit or vegetable.
Right book, wrong time: as the author notes, this is not a great climate for arguments against the power of big business in favor of the individual, even if the individual is 6. But don’t that stop you.