Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Consumerism, Time and the Human Person, Part II

Playing Mind Games with Our Children

Advertising executive Nancy Shalok was quoted in 1999 as saying, "Advertising at it’s best is making people feel that without their product, you’re a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them to buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them you’re a dork if you don’t, you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities, and it’s easy to do with kids because they’re the most vulnerable." Ms. Shalok isn’t the only advertising executive who is on to this. In the late 1990s marketing professor James McNeal pointed out that since the 1960s children’s influence on their parents’ buying went from 5 billion dollars annually to 188 billion dollars in 1997. Not surprisingly the amount spent on advertising directed toward children is now in the billions of dollars. As Ms. Shalok suggested, children are particularly vulnerable to the persuasion of advertisers. The Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Advertising and Children published in 2004 noted that children below the ages of 4-5 are unable to distinguish between a television ad and a program. Those below the ages of 7-8 are unable to understand that advertising exists specifically to create within strong desires to purchase particular products and services and to create perceived needs where before they did not exist. In short, advertisers are particularly adept at playing with our children’s minds. And there need not be a direct appeal to purchase a particular product. When I take my four-year-old son to the supermarket we invariably end up at the dairy department. When he sees Dora the Explorer’s picture on the packaging of a particular brand of yogurt, John excitedly asks me to buy him "Dora the Explorer yogurt." If our refrigerator is low on yogurt, yes, I admit it; "Dora the Explorer yogurt" is added to the shopping cart.

It seems to get worse as youngsters get older. An important task in the psychosocial development of the teenager is the development of a strong, healthy sense of his or her identity. In our consumerist society person personal identities are heavily influenced by what one owns. Not surprisingly by the time a youngster reaches adolescence advertisers have already been working on fostering brand loyalty among these young consumers. The new media technologies themselves facilitate the task of advertisers who tend to focus on quick, exciting, images and messages that catch the attention of the viewer/listener. The ads are everywhere – television, the Internet, radio, the movie theatre, and even Channel One broadcast in many schools across the country. It is estimated that the typical child sees 20,000 thirty-second ads on TV every year. To say that kids are being bombarded with sound bytes intended to manipulate them into purchasing (or nagging their parents to purchase) goods and services is not mere hyperbole. To return to Ms. Shalok’s statement: "But if you tell them you’re a dork if you don’t [buy something], you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities..." These same 20,000 thirty-second ads are also telling the young that their identities and meaning in life are not to be found within themselves and in relationship to others and to God.

Those of us who are parents, grandparents and community leaders need first look at how we have, over the years, been accepting and uncritical of the ads directed to us. We need to honestly question how much our identities, meaning in life and self-worth are based upon those things we possess. In short we must be models for our children. In the final segment of this series we will more closely how we might respond to the intense pressure to consume.