Children as Consumers

1. Children as Consumers • Adults’ concerns toward children’s vulnerability • 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

2. Rise of Child Consumer • Human society in the past 50 years • Consumer activity increased (scope and scale) • Range of consumer goods increased • Shopping becoming popular • Availability of opportunities grown • Intensive marketing focus on children • 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

3. 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

4. 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.”

5. 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?

6. Evidence from Research- 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

7. Evidence from Research- Constructivist 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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!

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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