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Advertising and parenting
Submitted by stefan on Wed, 19/09/2007 - 10:58am
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Excerpt from "The Advertising Culture & the World We Won't Let Go" by Craig Mackintosh: Our schools educate the next generation of 'consumers', and when our educational institutions run low on funding for educational materials, corporations 'helpfully' fill the void. For example, I remember as a child being taught to eat from the 'four basic food groups', and noticing the bottom of the colourful schematic were the words 'This card is generously supplied by the Meat & Dairy Board'. We have industry influences in our schools, influencing what they can and cannot learn. The flip side of this is that while our children inevitably leave school to strive for the 'American Dream' and climb the corporate ladder, the business world keeps the pulse of consumerism beating through continual 'social education': Advertising. São Paulo - Advertisement Free! Obviously this is quite a brave and radical step that São Paulo has taken. But when you know that advertisers are now targeting the 0-3 year-old market with clever and subtle marketing strategies it makes you wonder how we can ever bring up children that are not completely brain washed for consumerism. As a new parent trying to find out useful information I am constantly targeted by marketing messages - who do I listen to? Commercial organisations are first and foremost interested in selling their products or services - so you'd have to take their information with a pinch of salt. Not for profit organisations often push a certain agenda (i.e. tell you what's right and what's wrong). With Government a lot of the information is often hard to find and in a format that doesn't really appeal to me. This leaves information from other parents, family and friends. At the moment that's my preferred source of information. -Stefan |
I've just come across an excellent blog on advertising and corporate brainwashing by Craig Mackintosh who blogs for 
I agree with Hamish ...
I agree with Hamish ...
Still, it is important to note that advertisers have teams of psychologists, pseudo-psychologists, and other brain-washers employers with the goal of infiltrating you child's mind. It is far more insidious than we know.
They have done research about how to influence people without them knowing it. Specifically, advertisers target the unconscious mind, convincing us that we need their product while bypassing the "thinking" part of our brain.
The use of subliminal images were banned in many countries decades ago, but this stuff is far more advanced and effective.
Oops, my paranoia is beginning to really show thru ...
Anyway, I just don't think that parents are equipped to neutralize all the subtle (and not so subtle) advertising that our children are exposed to. Actually, we ourselves are affected by advertising messages far more than we realize. How can we compete with this?
We can make choices for our
We can make choices for our kids to reduce the impact of agressive marketing. Our choice is not to have TV... we have TV sets and DVD players, but we choose the content that the kids watch, all of which is advertisement free and much of it educational in nature.
The likley impact is that we probably get less nagging from the kids re this or that product.. however we are not immune. McDonalds is recognised out the car window by our two year old, and our 4 year old asked for a Barbie bus for her birthday.
I am less worried with my kids now (2 & 4) than I am going to be when I have teenagers. The imagery of models, the attitudes of rock stars... and the subsequent exposure they get is phenominal (note: as Dads we are critical male role models for our kids and others).
No matter what we do our kids are going to be exposured to brand messages and images, helping them decipher these messages is what we have to do.
Hey Peter - that's shocking
Hey Peter - that's shocking news. I hadn't heard but can barely believe it. Craig and I are going to do some more investigation and see if we can write another blog on it. This is one of the sadest news on our children's education that I have heard recently ...
It would be great if we
It would be great if we could ban ALL advertising to children. I am shocked to see some of the ads that come on TV during children's programing. They all follow the same basic theme of "If you get this product, you will be better, faster, smarter and have more fun, more friends..." etc., etc., ad naseum.
I don't know how you could enforce it, other than to create more useless bureaucracy, which would not be worth it. Still, one would think that taking the junk out of the textbooks that Peter spoke about would be an easy start. How about making schools advertisement-free zones, at a minimum?
Back in the States (where I am from), sponsorship in schools is BIG business and schools are basically underfunded to the point that they have to sell their souls to Coca-Cola in order to keep the doors open. I hope this is not a world-wide trend.
Hey Stef did you hear in the
Hey Stef did you hear in the last couple of days, that in Australia, the Education Dept is aggressively defending their decision to allow advertisements in text books 0_0.
They see nothing wrong with Johnson & Johnson sponsoring text books for schools. Only thing is that inside are advertisements for plasters to tampons littered inside like a magazine, I'm guessing.
It boggles my mind how anyone could think that's OK.
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