Eastham Windmill

The No Ethics Zone: Advertising as Culture and the National Children's Health Crisis

by Dianna Morton, Media Literacy Educator

Based on her knowledge of economics, sociology, psychology, and media, through the eyes and practice of a social scientist,Juliet Schor(2004), in Born to Buy,  examined our contemporary culture in which advertising has an immense effect on young people, in particular children ages eighteen months through thirteen years old. Having posed the question, "What is happening to kids today?" in terms of well-being trends,  Schor did not dismiss the discourse that crosses political spectrums including family structure, permissive parenting, the decline of morality, and ill performing schools, yet included what she named the " 800 pound gorilla" in the room, an alternative explanation: Media and Consumer Culture. The basis for this claim is that children are spending more time with media than generations of the past. Her quantitative research strategy was two fold. First, she obtained a managerial position with a Madison Avenue children's marketing group.

There, Schor was tutored in all facets of children's advertising; she met with those contacts for an additional forty meetings and interviewed people in the industry to find out what was going on and what the cutting edge of marketing to kids was. Schor's second mode of  research involved surveying three hundred children age ten through thirteen in five schools, both urban and suburban, and residing in varying socio-economic and racial/ethnic households, in the Boston area, to measure consumer involvement, media use, and a series of psychological variables including depression, self-esteem, headaches, etc. This research included twenty six parent interviews. The purpose was to ask the question what is the impact of media and commercialization on children's well being? Schor examined how the market targets children immersed in the consumer media culture to their detriment, in which they are offered false promises, yet are put into a metaphorical prison in which they are controlled, bereft of connection with caring adults, suffer severe stress and anxiety, become prone to obesity and diabetes, and are encouraged to develop addictive behaviors, all in order to meet the ever increasing demands of the market.

In a broad analysis, contemporary advertising is damaging to children, and therefore detrimental to the well being of the society if we are to view children as our future. In order to understand the theoretical foundation of this analysis, it is essential to look at the cultural role advertising plays in the society, and how through this role society's values are constructed. This is not to examine advertising in its effectiveness in selling product, but to examine advertising in terms of what stories are being told. These stories influence our behavior, our morality, and our ideas about what is important. (Jhally, 2000, p.30) One of the most prominent ways in which advertising works is by catering to deep human needs, as people's relationships with objects is what defines us as human beings. In Sut Jhally's debate with James Twitchell "On Advertising" (2006), Jhally exemplified this with the huge success of The DeBeers advertising campaign in which the power of advertising has structured our culture into responding to the belief that the diamond is directly correlated with meeting the needs of love and courtship. He stated that The DeBeers example points out how advertising works, "by reaching deep seated human needs." (Jhally, 2006, p. 119) Jhally also noted that this system has been established as an essential part of Capitalism. He quoted retail analyst of the 1940's Victor Liebow in his essay "Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse" (2000):

               Our enormously productive economy...demands that we
               make consumption our way of life, that we convert the
               buying and the selling of goods into rituals, that we
               seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction
               in commodities...We need things consumed, burned up,
               worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing
               rate. (in Jhally, 2000, p. 31)

It is this connection between goods and human happiness that the story of advertising tells us, and in telling this story, a culture is created. Based on this premise, humans become the product sold to advertisers, of value only as a potential customer.

     The defense of advertising is the second underpinning concept to clarify when examining the detrimental effects of advertising on children. This defense is based on the belief that adults are rational and can detect truth and falsity in advertising. Yet, this argument cannot be applied to children because rationality is not something that exists, but develops. Based on the defense of advertising theory, it would be unethical to direct advertising to children, especially children under the age of twelve, as the younger the child, the more vulnerable to the message. Prior to the 1960's, children were only exposed to ads that were made for adults. The reason is that a medium for the market did not exist until television entered as a commodity in the mainstream culture. This commercial media technology connected children directly to the market. Juliet Schor (2004) explained that up through the 1980's, the messages of advertising were less directly sent to children, as the parent served as a gatekeeper to some extent. She noted how this historic shift in the triangle of children, parents, and marketers began to break down in the eighties, and that advertising firms pushed and disseminated this old regime in the 1990's, where a direct market to kids, via advertising, created an alliance between the marketer and children. She stated that the corporate position made a claim to children in which the marketer is "going to take you to a free hedonistic place where everything is going to be fun." (Schor, 2004, p. 202) The taste of a generation is being formed through a process of marketing and advertising. The lives, the development of meaning, and experiences are being constructed by a set of corporations who are turning children into commercialized children. The market's claim is that it is empowering these children. Yet, Schor, based on a structural equation model of media exposure and physical and psychological health, argues that the negative trends in childhood well being are directly correlated to media exposure.

     Statistics that Schor was exposed to during her "work" on Madison Avenue was that the present generation of children is the most "brand" oriented. Her Madison Avenue "constituents" bragged that by eighteen months old, children were identifying logos, and by age two, they were asking for products by brand name. By age three, children were using brands to communicate aspects of their personalities. The growth of research on how to market to kids included marketers moving into homes to "study" kids and their activities. The scientific side of the research included "neuro-marketing"- actual MRI scanning on "consumers", including children.  In her direct research with children, Schor recognized that children were shopping 50 % more than the preceding generation, both with their parents and on their own. The supermarket was the predominant consumer arena. Schor also noted that commodities have become increasingly influential especially in social dynamics within schools. Among youngsters who previously answered questions about future aspirations with career goals, the number one answer (75%) is now "rich." (Hymowitz, 2007, ¶ 5  ) As I thumbed through a local high school newspaper this week, two out of three senior students interviewed stated "rich" as the future goal they wished to attain.  A term used by Madison Avenue when discussing their target child audience is "Tweens". The markets' hype is the benefits of appealing to the children's "aspiration age". (Hymowitz, 2007, ¶ 5)  Tweens are between six and twelve years old, and the term refers to a person who is between childhood and adolescence. According to the marketers, a six year old is no longer a child. If we are to return to the ethics of advertising, this concept takes the heat off the advertisers in a moral debate.

     Through advertising and corporate media, there are several stories that are being told to children about the culture of childhood. The first is that children now have clout in the market place. Prior to this shift in the eighties, kids' consumer culture was "cheap". There was penny candy to be sold along with cheap plastic toys. When the paradigm began shifting, and children were spending more time with media, an advertising culture was set into place to reel the children into the consumer culture. In her article Childhood for Sale, Kay Hymowitz stated that, "marketers use the expertise of anthropologists, sociologists, brain-imaging specialists, child psychologists, and pollsters to plumb children's desires, analyze family dynamics, and develop techniques that seem consciously designed to make parents' lives miserable." (Hymowitz, 2007, ¶ 5) Part of this alliance between marketers and children is the "nag-factor" or "pester power", which results, according to Schor (2004), in seven hundred billion dollars of adult purchasing power being driven by children annually. As the Nickelodeon motto has it, "Kids Rule!"

      In this defunct paradigm, food is a major product that is being pushed.  A recent study done by the Kaiser Foundations Food for Thought:  Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States concluded the following:

               The study combined content analysis of TV ads with detailed
               data about children's viewing habits, to provide an estimate
               of the number and type of TV ads seen by children of various
              ages. The study found that tweens ages 8-12 see the most food
              ads on TV, an average of 21 ads a day, or more than 7,600
              a year. Teenagers see slightly fewer ads, at 17 a day, for
              a total of more than 6,000 a year. For a variety of reasons --
              because they watch less TV overall, and more of their viewing
              is on networks that have limited or no advertising, such as PBS
              and Disney -- children ages 2-7 see the least number of food ads,
              at 12 food ads a day, or 4,400 a year.

              For each age group studied,food was the top product seen advertised.
             Thirty-two percent of all ads seen by 2-7 year olds were for food,
             while 25% of ads seen by 8-12 year olds and 22% of ads seen by 13-17
             year olds were for food. Of all genres on TV, shows specifically designed for children under 12 have the highest proportion of food advetising (50% of all ad time).

            "Children of all ages see thousands of food ads a year,
             but tweens see more than any other age group,"
             said Vicky Rideout, vice president and director
             of the Program for the Study of Entertainment Media
             and Health at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "Since
             tweens are at an age where they're just becoming
             independent consumers, understanding what type of
             advertising they are exposed to is especially
             important." (The Kaiser Foundation, 2007, ¶ 2)

            

     The study revealed that out of the types of food advertised, 34% are for candy and snacks, 28% are for cereal, and 10% are for fast foods. Of the 8,854 ads reviewed in the study, there were none for fruits or vegetables targeting children or teens. The appeals used in advertising food to kids include a push to view websites and a premium toy gift. One in ten of these toys are connected to a TV or movie character. Only fifteen percent of this advertising included depicting healthy habits such as physical activity. (The Kaiser Foundation, 2007, ¶5)

     Out of all the battles between parent and child: food, drugs, sex, and violence, food is the one that lost, and may do the most harm to children over time. The extreme changes in the levels and rates in obesity in American children show that one quarter of all children are obese today. One third of these children will develop diabetes as a direct result. (Schor, 2004, p.128) There is a never ending increase of branding of junk food through toys. Junk food is even being produced to look like toys. Hymowitz (2007) highlighted the point that, " They (the marketers) appeal to children's impulsiveness by introducing ever more exciting and more noxious products like "Blue Funky Fries" or "Mystery Color Ketchup." (Hymowitz, 2007, ¶5) While this advertising is going on, continuously pervasive is drug, alcohol, and tobacco advertising to kids. (Schor, 2004, p. 35-36)

      Another story that is being told about the culture of childhood is that adults are the enemy. Schor claims that Nickelodeon is the prime pusher of this concept. Shows on Nickelodeon are disrespecting of adults, and sell children on the "cool" factor. To be connected to "cool", you need to be disconnected from adults. Anti-adultism is rampant in this consumer kids' culture. Schor's research indicated that the more children watch Nickelodeon, the more they dislike their parents. (Schor, 2004, p. 51) A few months ago, an eleven year old child was a guest in my home for a week. She watched television (which is severely monitored in her own home), and often chose the Nickelodeon station as a novelty. I sat with her to view a show on a Saturday morning and was abhorred by the behavior of the animated characters. Teachers were portrayed as sadistic and evil; children were physically torturing their teachers in retaliation.   My viewing experience leads me accept Schor's observation.

      A third story being told is the need to be "cool" in order to be respected in the society. A shift in how products are marketed to children has changed. In the past, the nature of the product was advertised as in "It tastes good." or "It is fun to play with." Yet in this new world of marketing to kids, the adult approach of the symbolic and social significance of the product is what is being sold as in "You need this cereal to be cool."
The move has been from the intrinsic qualities of the product to the branding of the product, and cool has become the central theme of all youth marketing. Although this idea has been present in adolescent culture for many years, making sense in terms of childhood development in which the adolescent needs to seek an identity separate from a family identity, (Merchants of Cool, a PBS documentary, examines the marketing to teens industry in depth) the idea that a six year old should care about being "cool" is radical. Another shift in marketing to children is that marketers are now taking products and themes ("cool") usually marketed to adults and teens and are marketing these products to children. (Schor, 2004, p. 202) These include items such as make-up and iPods. Children are now weighing in on what type of automobile the family will purchase. As major automobile marketers attend the marketing for children conferences, companies like Toyota sponsors family safety pamphlets to schools. There has been an age compression in media marketing.

      According to cultural critic Steven Kline (2004), marketers have always paid more attention to children's imaginations than educationists. They recognized these attributes as the deeply planted roots of children's culture, and that they could use them to communicate effectively with children. (Schor, 2004, p.203).  In one sense, this marketing move does empower children. Consumer theory views the consumer as agent rather than consumer as manipulated, and children are now viewed as economic agents and consumer agents according to marketers- their defense is that they are empowering children. Yet this empowerment is taking place in a toxic media consumer environment.
As boundaries between adult and child break down- what will be the role of children in the future?  The problem of what is happening today is that the world children have been let loose into is the corporate construction of the market place, which includes tobacco, junk food, and alcohol. A very small number of powerful corporations, and through a discourse of empowerment, are making kids sick. Schor (2004) noted that the notion of sacred childhood, in which the field of childhood development sprouted from, fails to recognize its own social construction-the field of childhood development grew up simultaneously with marketing to kids. (Schor, 2004, p. 200-201)  Kline lamented that, "Television kills children's imaginations with limited colonizing narratives; violates their innocence in relation to sex, violence, and commerce; and like a narcotic, numbs their innate curiosity about the world." (Kinder, 1999, p. 121)

      Schor's research supports Kline's observations between the amount of commercial media consumed by children and the direct correlation on children's physical and emotional health. According to Schor (2004), 21 % of the population ages 9 through 17 suffer from emotional behavior /psychological disorders including depression and anxiety. (Schor, 2004, p. 152-172) Schor  (2004) concluded that kids spend more time in consumer culture than anywhere else. Their average daily media use is six hours and twenty one minutes, and that reading magazines and books has also become a commercial medium to sell products, especially media characters. Schor (2004) also noted that the amount of exposure time with media could be considered  a plus of two hours due to double exposure - daily TV use is 3hours and 4 minutes plus movies and videos 3:51, video games 49 minutes, recreational computer use one hour. Although it was anticipated that computer use would push out the television, this is not the case. Computer use is rising, but television use is not declining. (Schor, 2004, p. 154-162). The media has become an advertising delivery system for children. And based on Schor's research, children are ingesting advertising and marketing for most of the child's day.

      The average American young person has the anxiety level equivalent to what was measured in 1957 in in-patients psychological hospital. (Schor, 2004, p. 35) A study published in the Pediatrics Journal  found that "the rates of emotional and behavioral problems among children aged four through fifteen soared between 1979 and 1996." (Schor, 2004, p. 35)  Among the high rates of anxiety and depression among today's youth, suicide is now the fourth leading cause of death among ten to fourteen year olds. (Schor, 2004, p. 35) The worsening of these well being trends has occurred in a period of time when rates of child poverty were declining; a period of time in which should have been presumed a more healthy and hopeful childhood. Juliet Schor's research concluded that the whole picture that is playing out in terms of kids well being in this immersion in media consumer culture is the underlying cause of emotional and psychosomatic illnesses in children and adolescents. The higher the level of consumer involvement the higher the level of depression, anxiety, etc-The higher media use leads to higher consumer involvement that then leads to psychological outcomes. The model does not go both ways. In order to resolve this situation, a developmental approach is only a starting point, as it fails to address and understand the cultural context, and the public health approach is too narrow.  The social and cultural context in which kids are being raised needs to be considered. (Schor, 2004, p. 200)

     In the twelve years from 1992 through 2004, the annual budget of direct child marketing moved from one billion to fifteen billion dollars in the United States. The consumer media market now saturates the landscape of childhood, from television to video games, to schools and museums. Congress "Tied the hands of the Federal Trade Commission in 1981" (Schor, 2004, p. 194) in regulating children's media. The Children's Television Act passed in 1990, yet it is a far cry from an alternative, basically requiring stations to include three hours per week of educational programming, yet with little oversight. In Advertising, Culture, Criticism, and Pedagogy: An Interview with Sut Jhally conducted by William O'Barr, Jhally (2006) goes so far as to metaphorically compare advertising to child molestation. He also claims the same of the media based on how commercial television is organized. Jhally (2006) stated, "What networks are trying to do is gather you together in the way a factory owner would gather laborers together. They are drawing value out of your watching, out of your labor." (Jhally, 2006, p. 14) Jhally further explained that when this is done to children as early young as two years old, it becomes a type of child labor. (Jhally, 2006, p. 14) The networks need their captive audience to sell their product. 

     A de-commercialization of cultural would seem the way to correct these problems in children's health. According to Schor (2004), this would include the de-commercialization of food, media space, and the outdoors. Schor advocates for a national comprehensive curriculum in gardening, menu planning, eco-literacy, and science and nutrition. She suggests a model of a government funded "National Kids Public Media Corporation", (Schor, 2004, p. 203), and a national incentive to make outdoor spaces much safer for children, so that children will not be confined to indoors, only to become a captive audience for commercial media and sedentary media involved activities. Recently, after a year of co-teaching media literacy to high school students, a colleague of mine removed her television from her home. She noted that at first, her children, ages seven and ten, moaned and groaned about the house, nagging for its return. Within a week, she observed a shift in their behavior. Instead of coming home from school and fighting over program viewing, they ran outside to play, and soon made no mention over the missing television; yet these children are fortunate to reside in a relatively safe rural environment. Such a movement to de-commercialize the culture would take tremendous effort not just from legislators, but from parents and educators. There are currently numerous organizations, including The Action Coalition for Media Literacy, The Media Education Foundation, Stop the Commercial Exploitation of Children, The Center for Media Education, Commercial Free Childhood, and The Center for the New American Dream, that are working towards this very goal. Although their funding is small and limited, individuals and communities are moving towards involvement and support in these cultural movements as imperative in the future of our children, and ultimately humanity, rather than contribute to a media driven consumer machine that pillages the earth, the cultures of the peoples, the brains and mindsets of individuals: a culture that can only result in war over limited resources and the destruction of life on earth. 

References

(March, 2007). Food for thought: television food advertising to
children in the united states. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from Kaiser Family Foundation Web site: 

Hymowitz, K. (2005, Wntr). Childhood for Sale?. Public Interest 125+.
Retrieved November 17, 2007, from Questia database: 

Jhally, S. (2000).Advertising and the edge of the acocalypse. Critical
Studies in Media Commercialism. 27-39.

Jhally, S. (Ed.). (2006). The spectacle of accumulation: essays in culture,
media, and politics. New York, New York: Peter Lang.

Kinder, M. (Ed.). (1999). Kids' media culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Retrieved November 24, 2007, from Questia database. 

Schor, J. (2004). Born to buy. New York, New York: Scribner.