I’d like to discuss a serious topic, a subject I feel strongly about: advertising towards children in the digital age.
I have one five year old. He is now able to operate a tablet, browse Youtube, use some learning apps, and play some basic games. He is just passing the point where he has a basic concept of money, though to him it is still a binary concept.
I’m going to argue here that, a lot of what he has seen over the past three years, at best, should be viewed as predatory. At worst, it should be illegal.
Kids Are Not Adults
I want to preface my argument by saying, I am as close to an “anarchist” as you could reasonably get for adults. Many of the things that are illegal today should not be. As long as you are not hurting anyone else, I think you should be able to do pretty much whatever you’d like – life is short, do what makes you happy. If you, in the privacy of your home, want to go eat some mushrooms and stare at your ceiling listening to Tool for 12 hours, I am in complete support. The “sin tax” on such activities should be high enough to compensate for the overall effect it can have on the healthcare system, but at some sufficient price, you should be able to lick all the frogs you want.
That said, children are different. The reason society has an established an “age of consent” for many of life’s “activities” – driving, military enlistment, alcohol, smoking, other substances, sexual activities, body modification, etc – is because we believe humans are unable to make informed choices before various stages of brain development.
Kids progress through a series of milestones as they age, finally reaching capacity at about 25. It seems the consensus is that “around 6”, kids start understanding the finite nature of money, and by 8, they understand the concept of bills and maybe some budgeting (“my allowance is X – I might have to save up for this for a few months”). They suggest starting an allowance at age six to start teaching these habits. Before this, they do not really understand money. At a broad level, they know that “parents work for money, which buys toys” but to them, money is a “binary thing” – you have money (or you don’t). There is no concept of cost or budgeting.
The Modern Day Onslaught
Now, onto the villain of this rant – modern day advertising.
In the days of old, lets say the century from 1900-2000, happy families would browse the toy store a few times a year – before Christmas, birthdays, and after major achievements like strait A’s. This was a healthy system of expectations and work/reward. Even for a five year old, if you cleaned your room, every day all month, mom might take you to Toys R’ Us, and boy what fun that would be.
Kids looked forward to those rewarding moments. You might be filled with anticipation, possibly having to wait for weeks, to get the latest issue of Lego magazine in the mail, so that you could show dad all the amazing new sets that Santa should be informed of.
These days are no more. Today, kids are slammed with ads constantly – we have turned the dial up to 11. Whether it’s Youtube ads, ads on educational websites, product placement in seemingly harmless shows/movies, “in app purchases”, excessive TV ads, or content that is itself one giant advertisement [2] – it’s a constant barrage. This inundation presents a (self-inflicted) problem for our children, particularly between the ~2-6 age group as discussed. Not just toys either – it is no coincidence that 20% of our children are now obese, given the insane amount of candy advertising.
I see no positives for our families to this rapid increase in advertising, regardless of income level. Constant ads encourage longing, not being happy with what we have, waste (who needs that toy from last week – look at this new thing!), and teaches us to constantly seek the next best thing. The only beneficiary here are the corporations making and selling these products, of course. While all of this is probably true for adults too, children, unlike us, do not understand how advertising is a numbers game. We can reason that we see 100 ads a day so that maybe we will purchase one of the items – they cannot.
On Consent
For these reasons, I think this drastic increase in advertising relates to the concept of consent. Unless you go to extreme measures, it is nearly impossible to shield your child from it. First off, you are charged a hefty premium to “partially opt out” – I pay $264/year (!) for the Youtube premium family plan, so we (including myself) can watch some content without ads. But even that isn’t enough – since much of the content that the wonderous Youtube algorithm lands children on are themselves ads – kids opening and playing with toys (what happened to good ol’ Tom and Jerry?). Finally, more learning is shifting to electronic (“e-learning”) every year – so even if you were to completely cut out “fun media” (and good luck with that..) there is still digital real estate in front of our children’s eyes increasingly more often.
To tie this all together – advertising to young children, i.e., on sites/apps/channels aimed at pre ~6 (there is a “Y7” rating for example), should be illegal. I do not see much difference between this and scamming the elderly. Like the days of old, I think advertising should be targeted to adults, to inform them about the latest and greatest toys/fads, so that they can act as a filter and decide how much of this their child ingests.
Progress
Some progressive nations have gotten the message:
In the United Kingdom, Greece, Denmark, and Belgium advertising to children is restricted. In Norway and Quebec advertising to children under the age of 12 is illegal.
In the US, we have made some mild progress. For example, the FTC does not allow ads that show “unrealistic expectations”, like your new toy horse coming to life and taking you to school. However, they have mostly failed to pass broad protective reform against the concept of predatory advertising itself. Even the most expansive legislation has not been updated for the modern digital age.
Good luck to all the fellow moms and dads out there, navigating this sea of bits.
~
Footnotes
[1] One could argue that not all of these “restrictions” are consistent. For example, I think it’s ridiculous that you can go enlist in war – maybe even give your life on a tour of duty, but can’t come home and [legally] have a pint afterwards?
[2] “Unboxing videos”… this is the most infuriating topic for me, and while I don’t think it should be illegal, I find it immoral and despicable when aimed at children. As an adult, if you want to salivate over a guy slowly unwrapping the newest iPhone, backed by 70s pr0n music, be my guest. I think it’s a weird thing to get off to, but I’m happy for you. But for children? Just take a brief look at this search and tell me that this doesn’t make children depressed after 20 minutes of watching others get to unwrap toys – toys they likely don’t have – and enjoy them. The only parallel to this in the “old days” is perhaps watching your friend play with something you don’t have – e.g., during playdates – but now you can experience this emptiness and longing 24/7!
TJC 