Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood

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The land of the free, brave and consumerism is what the United States has become today. The marketing industry is exploiting children through advertisement, which is ridiculously unfair to children. We are around advertisement and marketing where ever we go; at times, we don't even notice that we are being targeted to spend our money. As a matter of fact, we live to buy; we need and want things constantly, and it will never stop. The film, Consuming Kids , written by Adriana Barbaro and directed by Jeremy Earp, highlights children as this powerful demographic, with billions of dollars in buying power, but the lack of understanding of marketers’ aggressive strategies. Children are easily influenced and taken advantage of, which is why commercialization of children needs to stop. Commercialization to children leads to problems that parents do not even know are happening such as social, future, and rewired childhood problems. Government regulations need to put a stop to corporations that live, breathe and sell the idea of consumerism to children and instead show that genuine relationships and values are what are important.
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 ...

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...heir worlds as they struggle to differentiate between fact and fiction. The United States has raised a generation to believe that consumerism is the golden ticket to satisfaction and happiness. There needs to be a return of government regulation in order to stop marketers and big corporations from brainwashing innocent children, because it is not ethical. This issue, of children being exploited and wrongly targeted by marketers and advertisers show that consumerism is changing culture and the values in this country drastically. Basically, media has become the parent to many children, taking away the relationship between people and invading home life.

Works Cited

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Dir. Adriana Barbaro and Jeremy Earp. Media Education Foundation, 2008. Film. Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.

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