Transcript Children as Consumers

Children as Consumers
• Adults’ concerns toward children’s vulnerability
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Capitalist media colonizing children’s consciousness
Imposing false ideologies
Inculcating materialistic values
Therefore, calling for protection, censorship, regulation
• Relationship between Children and Economy
– Wide beliefs about essential nature of childhood (Jordanova)
• Children as in sacred state of life
• Naturally incompatible with the world of commodities
– Economy: Transition from status of child to status of adult
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Rise of Child Consumer
• Human society in the past 50 years
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Consumer activity increased (scope and scale)
Range of consumer goods increased
Shopping becoming popular
Availability of opportunities grown
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Reduced family size
Increased divorce and single-parents
Increased disposable household income
Children with greater purchasing decision
Quantity of media programs for children (not necessarily
in diversity or quality); Now, the Internet
• Intensive marketing focus on children
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Advertisement,
Entertainment and Education
• Blurred difference between entertainment
and education
• Educational activities with advertising
messages
• Blurred boundaries between content and
advertisement
• Meanwhile, widening gap between
information-rich and information poor
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Market and Children
• Some critics:
– The market as inherently inimical to the true
interests and needs of children
– Commercial media as an incitement to
consumerism and an exploration of children’s
vulnerability
• Other critics”
– Market as an effective means of meeting
children’s need
– “What’s good for business is good for kids.”
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Critiques of Advertising
• Effects of advertising
– Assumptions of inculcating consumerism and
materialistic values
– Accused of creating ‘false needs’
– False ‘consumption ideal’ to overcome
dissatisfaction and sense of powerlessness in
daily life (irrational fantasies)
• Critiques
– False needs vs. True needs (Commercial vs.
Uncontaminated)
– Are children really ‘incompetent’ and ‘irrational’,
and thus vulnerable to persuasion?
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Evidence from Research-
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Behaviorist Paradigm
Much evidence is weak or inconclusive
Younger children generally unable to remember and
understand advertisements
Advertising is less significant as source of
information than other sources such as peers and
parents, or visits to the shops
Making limited contribution to children’s beliefs
about the quality of products (eg., nutrition and
food)
Contribution to broader ideologies and values —
seem not sustained by available research
Difficulty in isolating a single factor from potential
influences
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Evidence from ResearchConstructivist Paradigm
• On cognitive processing rather than on effects
• Arguing that attention to advertising is highly
selective and interpretations diverse
• At what age to become aware of difference
between programs and advertisements?
– Various estimates, but early
– 7-8 well aware of advertisers’ motivation
– Sometimes cynical
• Generally, children are discriminating viewers
• Not necessarily trust advertising
• Attempt to compare with real-life experience
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Wise Consumers?
(Author’s research)
• Showing skepticism (age 8-12)
• Clearly aware of the persuasive functions
• Claiming to know about the production process and
camera tricks
• Asserting fakeness of before-and-after
• Children seem to be equipped with ‘cognitive
defenses’
• Will they automatically use the ‘defenses’?
• Critical discourse in research interviews; but still
admit being influenced by advertising
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Wise Consumers?
• Some children are cynical, but some are
‘fans’ of advertisements (on aesthetic
level, independent of product)
• Is the issues really about the opposition
between ‘rational’ and ‘emotional’
responses?
• Limitations in isolating advertising from
broad consumer culture
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Animating Consumers
• Merchandising (toys, T-shirt, theme parks…)
• and trans-media intertextuality (drama, film,
games…)
• ‘Cartoon as program-length commercial’
• Even public service TV tied in to generate revenue
(e.g., Thomas the Tank Engine, Teletubbies)
• Binary opposition between ‘public’ and ‘commercial’
necessary?
• Children more vulnerable than adults? Highly
questionable!
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Culture, Commerce,
and Childhood
• Assertions Similar to the ‘Death of Childhood’
– Culture
• Pure, Eden-like space, source of positive moral and aesthetic
values
– Commerce
• Culture invaded and corrupted by commerce
– Electronic Media
• Undermining traditional (healthier) preoccupation of street
play, peer conversation
• Two questions
– Cultural value: ‘Golden Age’ vs. Contemporary television
– The audience: Limited evidence about children (passive
audience)
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Children and
Consumer Culture
• Consumer Culture:
– Modern capitalism: Investing symbolic values in
material objects
– Construction of social identity: Acquisition and
use of material goods
• Changing Approach (toward youth)
– Now, emphasis on young people’s autonomy and
freedom --- Consumer creating their own
identity, diversely and innovatively
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Toward New Policies
• Seeking to protect children from marketplace vs.
Preparing children:
• Education
– Understanding relationship with consumer culture and
economic principles
• Legal recognition of children’s right as consumers
– Rights to accurate information, ‘consumer empowerment’
• Examination of children’s cultural needs
– Dialogue with children, rather than simply left to adults
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