Logan Barragan
loganbarragan@gmail.com
The opinions, personalities, styles, and preferences that we all currently possess have taken us a lifetime to develop. The type of music we enjoy, clothes we like to wear, and food we prefer was likely discovered in our early years and has been progressing ever since. Thankfully, as adults, we have a clearer understanding of what is about the things we enjoy that make us enjoy them so much, but who was it that encouraged us to want a McDonald's chicken nuggets or a Burger King burger after a soccer practice in the first place? Why did we force our parents and babysitters to drive us to the nearest 7/11 for a pack of skittles or a snickers bar after school?
Picture source: https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp1011/11rp09
Perhaps it was our caregivers who didn't feel like cooking us a full meal at 9 pm, (understandable), or they simply grew tired of hearing us whine about need a piece of candy like our life depended on it, but what is more likely is that it was due largely in part to the advertisements and commercials we saw every time we turned on the television. At such a young age, children are susceptible to the media, but are unaware of how manipulative it is. Children are naive to the corrupt corporate world we live in, and so they trust whatever it is they see on TV to be true.
According to the Official Journal Of The American Academy of Pediatrics, "the average young person growing up in the United States sees anywhere from 13,000 to 30,000 advertisements on television each year." While this statistic is troubling within itself, it is important to remember that we are very deep into the age of social media, and now more than ever young people have access to all sorts of media outlets, and with that come the plethora of advertisements that we see with every scroll. These advertisements teach the youth that the more they possess materialistic things the better their life will be.
To reference The Campaign For A Commercial Free Childhood, children who are more materialistic in nature statistically perform more poorly in academic settings. This is because they are more concerned and focused on the ownership of unnecessary things than they are about their education. Due to the fact kids are oblivious to how advertisements skew their perception of what is a legitimate, necessary thing to purchase what is a frivolous thing to have, it is vital for parents to take immediate action. The sooner people learn about the ins and outs of advertisement strategy, the sooner they can weed out which companies truly live by what they promote.
Hi Logan,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your piece! I liked how you related the child's everyday life into the advertising world. I agree that children who are more materialistic in nature perform poorly in school because they are constantly so concerned and focused on those materialistic objects. I liked that you finished the piece explaining that the soon we can teach people about advertising strategy, the more they can truly understand what brands and companies they are purchasing from.