Keep Targeting Kids and the Parents Will Start Targeting You
Lenore Skenazy
Advertising Age
May 19, 2008
For most of human
history, here is how the young of the species spent
their free time (when not running from animals with
sharp teeth):
Playing.
But now, says Harvard children's advocate Susan Linn,
"For probably the first time ever, we can't assume that
when children have leisure time they're playing
creatively." More likely (at least in my house), they
are watching TV, using the computer, playing a video
game, screening a movie, listening to an iPod or even
watching a battery-operated Elmo laugh himself sick.
In other words, they're consuming entertainment rather
than entertaining themselves. And while this may not
sound new -- feels like we've been deploring TV-zombie
kids forever -- the fact is that now they are surrounded
by electronic media in every room and sphere of their
lives: the crib, the car, the grocery cart. And most of
the time, those media have something to sell. Even the
ones that pretend they don't. (Hello, McDonald's, proud
sponsor of PBS!)
"This unfettered commercialism is a disaster for kids,"
says Linn, whose new book, "The Case for Make Believe,"
outlines how we got to this point and what may happen
next as parents start worrying about this media
onslaught from a mental- and physical-health
perspective.
They may demand government regulation.
That's because the whole situation burgeoned thanks to
de-regulation, says Linn, founder of the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood. In 1980, Congress curtailed
the Federal Trade Commission's ability to regulate
marketing to children, and in '85-'86 it allowed
companies to create programming for the sole purpose of
selling toys. "Within a year," Linn says, "all the
best-selling toys were linked to media: Power Rangers,
Ninja Turtles -- those kinds of things."
While there's nothing wrong with a Ninja Turtle toy or a
Power Rangers pillow, the stuff just kept coming. Today,
if your daughter (or son!) wants to be a Disney
princess, you've got several thousand licensed items to
choose from. But, of course, it's not just Disney out
for kiddie cash.
Dade Hayes, author of "The Anytime Playdate: Inside the
Preschool Entertainment Boom," writes that as a dad, he
was quite happy about Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer.
"I came to see her as a positive role model for my
daughter -- solving problems and having adventures. But
when you kind of take that same girl and you come up
with a Dora princess line and a Dora mermaid line, and
it becomes 300 different products and a theme park in
Dubai," that's when you realize that there is no limit
on how many watch me/buy me messages are bombarding
kids, says Hayes. When media-friendly folks such as
Hayes, a Variety editor, start getting fed up, it is
time to take notice.
Consider that in 1983, companies were spending $100
million a year to market to children. Today they're
spending 170 times more: $17 billion. Numbers like that
make parents realize they cannot limit this media
exposure by themselves. A movement builds.
Will it mandate curbs on marketing? Not until the
government sponsors a definitive study of the effects of
this commercial saturation, Hayes predicts. A bill
authorizing $60 million toward such a study is stalled
in Congress.
But Linn envisions a day when there's a major
public-health campaign to get young kids away from the
screen. And then another when America looks to Sweden,
Norway and the U.K. as models of how to limit the
commercials kids see.
Once parents realize kids aren't playing the way they
used to and decide it's all marketing's fault, there
could be a fight on the playground.