Kids these days are constantly looking to get the next best thing, or act how the “popular” people would act. In the article “Commodifying Kids: The Forgotten Crisis,” Giroux talks about the affects the media market is having on children of today. The media is “brainwashing” kids into buying their products and catching them while they are young. The children of today are measuring their worth by the things they own or the way they act, which is largely due in part to the media market. While I do agree with Giroux on how the media market is to blame for the strong influence of children, I also think that the parents should share some of the blame for giving into their child’s desires and buying and encouraging them to get the top products.
The media influences so much of our society today. They control the trends in clothing and style, and influence they way we act. The people who they are affecting the most are children. Giroux comments “Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market”(Giroux A136). Kids these days think they need to give in to the market to survive. One of the reasons for this mindset is because of the media corporations that are targeting young children. Companies are making strong marketing pushes toward children who are susceptible to persuasion. They are encouraging kids to buy the new IPhone or the new action figure. While it is not just products, children are also being influenced to act a certain way. TV and movie stars are teaching kids how to act based on characters they portray in movies and TV shows, which often times are not the right ways a child should act. Artists and other celebrities strongly affect the trends in clothing and ...
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...hild conforming to the ways of the media icons, then the kids will be less likely to act that way. The parents are a key part in loosening the grip the media market has on young children.
Not only are the media at fault for influencing children of today, the parents are also at fault for their encouragement of the media market. The market has a strong hold on children and is continually influencing them through many aspects of their lives. Parents need to encourage their children to not conform to whatever the media says. Kids do not need the newest items or hippest clothing in order to be successful. Parents need to slow down on spoiling their children and have them focus less on material things. Overall, we need to crack down on the gripping media market and encourage the children of today to be true to themselves and not rely so much on the media driven society.
Schor talks about how the street culture has affected marketing to young adults. Rap and hip-hop have become quite popular even in suburban homes. The top charts on any popular radio station have at least four or five rap songs in them. This popularisation of street culture has influenced marketers to subtly include violence, drugs, crime and sex into ads meant for teens, making it just subtle enough not to get called out for it. Edginess in advertising gave it that cool feel that kids were attracted to, the “gangsta” life. Cool being associated with these kind of negative things can influence kids to take part in such activities, wanting to live the cool way. Advertisers also exploit the underlying desire for kids to be more independant, showing rebellion against their parents, who are depicted as lame. When kids see this kind of behaviour on TV, they think that is how it should work for them too. One example Schor gives is a Sprite ad “The parents are in the front seat singing “Polly wolly doodle all the day,”... He is in the back banging his head on the car window in frustration… stuck this these two losers.” (223). The kid is the only one who gets that his parents are lame and he is the only one who is even close to cool in the car. The worst part about the new cool is that it’s not only
This survey was born out of concern that there are few statistics on the effects of marketing industry’s impact on our youth. Just as the article on “Consuming Kids” raises awareness about children being lured into believing they can’t live without things and the problems rising out of it. This survey makes us aware of how this market is willing to sacrifice the sanctity of family life by undermining the parents via their television while children watch mega hours of uninterrupted commercials aimed at them. These surveys were compared with a couple of sparsely completed other ones. The respondents felt that problems such as: aggressiveness, materialism, obesity, lack of creativity, overly sexualized behavior and self-esteem, were detrimentally influenced by the youth marketing industry.
Any agency that uses children for marketing schemes spend hundreds of billions dollars each year world wide persuading and manipulating consumer’s lifestyles that lead to overindulgence and squandering. Three articles uncover a social problem that advertising companies need to report about. In his research piece “Kid Kustomers” Eric Schlosser considers the reasons for the number of parents that allow their children to consume such harmful foods such as ‘McDonalds’. McDonalds is food that is meant to be fast and not meant to be a regular diet. Advertising exploits children’s needs for the wealth of their enterprise, creating false solutions, covering facts about their food and deceiving children’s insecurities. It contains dissatisfaction that leads to over consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, American Psychological Association article, “Youth Oriented Advertising” reveals the facts upon the statics on consumers in the food industries. The relationship that encourages young children to adapt towards food marketing schemes, make them more vulnerable to other schemes, such as, advertising towards clothing, toys and cars. Article writer of “The relationship between cartoon trade character recognition and attitude toward product category in young children”, Richard Mizerski, discusses a sample that was given to children ages three to six years old, about how advertising incurs young children that are attracted too certain objects or products on the market.
As a teenager, I have witnessed the effects of media on body image almost everyday. Kids these days are so focused on social media and having the perfect body type that they can hardly even function sometimes. The media has had such a negative impact on so many young people, do we really want our generation of young people to grow up with this kind of pressure to look just right? Although there are many positive things about the media, the negative impacts it has outweigh the good.
Marketers become rich by selling the idea of happiness to children; that life is all about buying and getting, and money is happiness. This ill treatment of children, by marketers, negatively affects social aspects of children. In more recent years, marketers have started to push more expensive, “branded” products to children. As Velmha La.Point states, “There’s a mantra in American society you are what you have, you are what you buy, you are what you own. The corollary of that, is and if you don’t have it, then you are a nobody”(Consuming Kids). This then leads to things such as depression or low self-esteem if ...
There is no doubt that children are like sponges. They soak up the information shown to them though television and the media on a daily basis, and copy it in the real world. In a matter of seconds, children can mimic a popular character; sing a song used in a beer advertisement, or even strike a “sexy” pose. All children have to do is put a DVD into the player, open a magazine, watch TV, or click on a web site to see these types of messages. The media offers us information on the world such as news, sports, and education; but what about the negative things it offers such as advertisements depicting young teenagers and children in scantily clad outfits, or impossible ideals that can almost never be lived up to such as “Victoria’s Angels” for females or Hollister models for males. Children are exposed to these on a daily basis, and are often unaware that they are being exploited. Television stations such as Disney and Nickelodeon depict children and teenagers in adult situations, and the media projects can lead unhealthy consequences in both males and females.
The effect of the media on young children is especially salient. Young children often learn how to act and behave from what they observe at home, from the adults and older peers they come in contact with, and from what they see on television.
Influence on Children Media - History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2212/Media-Influence-on-Children.html#ixzz1PoYlQRnG
Now in days when you want an answer to something, they google and it and do not even think about cracking open a book. Industries have in a way brainwashed kids to believe a certain thing when in reality it is not the way to think. Teare and Schlosser both provide two different views from the way kids are influenced into getting into buying something. Schlosser explains that industries use different gadgets to influence kids to buy that particular product, especially that of nagging to parents. If their child wants it they will most likely get nagged at until they buy the product they want. Teare shows a different problem with it, kids are now not focusing on reading and gaining knowledge through text books, but only play videogames or watch television. Kid consumers are effecting everything and they will continue to as long as companies are getting fed what they can to sell their
The media has changed significantly over the past decades. Technology has modified our abilities to expand our communication network, and it allows companies to spread their commercials over many different continents. Research done by Roberts (1993) shows that adolescent and children are often very influenced by media that involves sexual or violent conduct. This research is based on media involving children and adolescents, however this does not eliminate the effect media has on adults (Singer & Singer, 2001, p. 269).
Children watch an average of 2 hours and 17 minutes of television each day, 16 hours each week, and are exposed to 25,600 advertisements a year, with 22% of these advertisements being for food (Holt et al. 2007)(Rose, Merchant, Bakir 76). The majority of children aged between five and eight have some understanding of TV advertising, they are capable of differentiating programs and commercials especially if this understanding is measured by non-verbal rather than verbal measurement. Advertisers create ways to invade the minds of people everyday. Products and services surround our everyday lives and most influence children. Mottos, catchy phrases, and animated figures are just a few of the ways advertisers target the younger generation. Advertisers are influencing their wants and needs, as well as what’s in style and what is not. The industry gets exactly what they want, dedicated customers for life. Advertising is creating issues for children and affecting their lives. They understand TV advertisements at a young age, which can affect their thought and purchasing processes and the fast food industry is a leader in advertising and leading to childhood obesity.
It comes down mainly to everyone taking responsibility for our actions. As I said previously we cannot completely avoid the mass media, nor all of the impacts on our lives, however we can control how much we are exposed to in some points. As a parent there needs to be control of what children can and cannot watch as far as television, movies and limiting the time that it is watched. Parents need to educate themselves on the type of show their child wants to watch, sometimes children or teens are allowed to watch shows parents watch. As adolescents, teens, and young adults we have to take on our own responsibility. As an adolescent and teenager they can do their part by talking to their parents when you feel a show may not be appropriate. We all need to work on turning off the TV, or radios and spend more time in a positive manner. And as a society in all remind ourselves it is just TV, and all of the many advertisements or scenes we see are not the actual solution to problems or life’s solution. With the news watch what is necessary to stay up to date with the daily news, however not to the point that the news controls our thoughts. The media knows what and how to pull the society in so that we feed off of it.
The media in general reduces the different values of life, also makes violence and even death, which seem funny and unreal that children do not learn to respect themselves and in general, because of the violent television that is influencing them even more. If parents ignore or approve of their child's aggressive behavior, or if they lose control too easily themselves, a TV control plan will not help at all. In the same way, if parents themselves show violent behavior, they serve as role models for their children too.
...he media are now being reflected in the lives of the newly matured teenage generation, who were in part forced to grow up because of the media’s influence.
Faced with a multitude of choices and challenges, they often look for direction and guidance on how they can live their lives in today's society. As such, they are particularly susceptible to the media messages of behavior as acceptable, unacceptable, or normal. While the media has the capacity to teach behaviors that reflect positive social values, the majority of the research on the influence of media on teens has focused on the cause and effect relationship between the portrayal of immoral or dangerous conduct on the media and the resulting negative teen behavior. Media is a very powerful tool, which can lead teenagers on their journey through life. This has invariably created tension between parents who have positive expectations for their teenagers and teenagers who view such expectations as hopelessly out-dated.