Own This Child Kilbourne Summary

The world has begun to realize advertising to children results in failure, but America falls behind on these trends. According to Kilbourne, author of “Own This Child,” an essay focusing on advertisements targeting children, America stands as one of the last few industrialized nations that continues to legalize advertising to children. He writes about the myriad of attempts by companies to advertise to adolescents. Kilbourne mentions the effort made by big companies to be present in television commercials and even schools, so their products and brand names are wired into the child’s mind from an early age. However, companies are blind to the minimal movement they make in children’s lives. Business men in their fancy suits sitting in big offices

simple will never fully understand the mind of the younger generation. I should know. As a young teenager in a bustling world, I see thousands of advertisements every day. I have experienced the arguments Kilbourne made in his essay, and I find many faults in his perspective. My peers and me are not the mindless consumers that Kilbourne and many companies perceive us to be. Companies are oblivious to the fact that their attempts to broadcast and persuade adolescents are not as effective to the extremities they believe.
Today, the highlight of most children’s free time tends to be the television, and advertisers are aware of this.

The brightly colored moving images, and the dramatic storylines thrill the young views for hours on end. Companies use these channels as ways to broadcast their products to children. In theory, this causes children to immediately beg for their product and create brand loyalty. Kilbourne states, “Most little children can’t tell the difference between the shows and the commercials.” However, these are false statements. Children are not completely mindless. They can clearly acknowledge when their favorite television show disappears from the screen and an unfamiliar woman comes on the screen with a bottle of shampoo in her hand. Children lose interest fast. Therefore, when their show leaves the screen, the child leaves the television. Their attention fails to be on whatever commercial appears next, but rather focus on how many advertisements are left, finding another channel with an interesting show, or finding a toy in the room to entertain them until their favorite part of television returns. I dreaded commercials. The commercials are by far the worst part of any channel. As a child, my solution worked out to be changing the channel. On days in which I failed to find any channel on the show and not commercials, I would go to Boomerang, a channel with little to no commercials dedicate to classic cartoons such as Loony Toons, or the Flintstones. Regardless if I

felt entertained, I found the animated channel to be better than the boring commercials.
Companies also forget about the rise of technology that inhibits adolescents from seeing their commercials they spend so much money on to broadcast. During the slam of commercials in between young adults’ favorite shows, social media appears on their phones in their hand. Instead of watching the commercials, they are zoned out in the world of the internet. Furthermore, many families today own accounts on other programs, such as Netflix or Hulu. With these programs, children can watch episode after episode of any show they desire without advertisements. Some families cancel cable altogether and only rely on these commercial-free resources for their source of entertainment. With this, advertisers get cut out of the picture and children fail to be exposed to the commercials they claim work so well. As a result, companies target more than just their television as a source of advertising. Instead, they go to their schools.
Schools are a source for companies to force their advertisements and propaganda into the faces of children without them being able to escape, but they forget about the dramatic minds of teenagers, in which they can block everything out and escape in their own mind. Furthermore, advertisers broadcast the best they can in schools, but often times these advertisements fail to reach children as much as they desire. Teenagers easily lose focus in class. They begin to doodle on the desks, pull out a book, or begin passing notes to classmates. These things happen while the teacher presents a lesson. What makes advertisers believe they would instantly pay attention when an advertisement for laundry detergent appears on the screen? A darkly lit classroom to show a video, appears to a student as a time to put their head down and take a quick nap before the teacher notices. Similar to commercials on television, children do not want to watch advertisements.
Advertisers ignore the little thought adolescents give towards advertisements in school, or how little advertisements are indeed shown.

Kilbourne writes about the favored source by most advertisers, known as Channel One News. This new channel presents itself as a friendly resource for teachers to expose their students to current events and gives the instructors a short break in the back of the class before the torment of wild children begins once more. Kilbourne writes, “many children are a captive audience for the commercials on Channel One, a marketing program that gives video equipment to desperate schools in exchange for the right to broadcast a “news” program studded with commercials.” In middle school, I had a teacher that played this news source to the class every day. Occasionally, my class would watch this program, and the advertisements, twice due to multiple teachers using the resource. Kilbourne fails to mention a minor detail about these advertisements that changes the entire fact. All of these advertisements are the exact same. Every day, without fail, the same U.S. Navy advertisement would come on during the commercial breaks. Tangible products were never shown. Cruises, or vacation destinations were never advertised. Only the awareness commercial about the U.S. Navy appeared on the screen during eighth grade social studies. This advertisement became so repeated, the class began to recite the commercial as the battleships went across the screen. Did we gain

brand loyalty? Did we beg our parents to spend money on the neat product advertised in class? Never, because there failed to be anything to buy. An effective advertisement never appeared on the news channel. More advertisements were seen on YouTube as the teacher attempted to pull up a video that the county had blocked. Channel One News does nothing for advertisers. Kilbourne blatantly choses to ignore this fact as he argues companies effectively capture the minds of children through this source.
No matter the effort given by companies, children will not be subjected by the companies, as Kilbourne suggests. Children are quite smart. They can recognize for themselves what advertisements are coming across their television screen. When children do notice the advertisements, they ignore them, because they rather do other things. They change channels, open social media. Children will do anything to not watch commercials, including watching other less entertaining channels simply because there fails to be a commercial present. Additionally, the repetitiveness of commercials only worsens these effects. Even in school, children gloss over advertisements on the screen and do not process the commercial. They might see the words and pictures, but they fail to gain anything besides a waste of time. Advertisers will continue to attempt to make a shot at effectively advertising towards children, but they will miss their target countess times before they make a mark.