A message to kids they’re eager to buy

What’s a child to do this holiday season? Mom and dad are at work. The gym is closed, most friends aren’t around and those who are at home are not allowed to come over. Only one answer – off to the mall, the new American public square. After all, isn’t shopping what holidays are all about?

Americans talk of values, of blue states and red states, but the business of America is business, and our children are increasingly being defined, identified and managed as consumers. Social conservatives may blame schools or liberal elites for children’s precocious interests in sex and drugs, but mainstream business has far more to do with children’s values and expectations than anything the liberal local school board does.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) recently called my attention to the new “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.” Citing the film’s promotions with Burger King, Kellogg’s and Keebler, CCFC is warning parents to beware of the excessive and harmful levels of commercialism in the film. Dr. Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, comments: “This movie is essentially a 90-minute commercial for junk food. Parents who take their children to see the film should expect to be besieged with requests for products from the movie’s promotional partners.”

SpongeBob SquarePants is only the tip of a dangerous commercial iceberg that threatens our children and is reshaping our culture. Building on her pioneering 1990s work on consumer culture, Boston College economist Juliet Schor has a new book, “Born to Buy.” She shows that the pressures toward a work and consumption treadmill begin virtually at birth. Schor’s earlier work identified the role that long working hours, extremely inegalitarian and highly competitive workplaces, and status insecurities played in the drive for consumerism. Now she highlights the consequences of these trends for children.

Parents work longer hours than ever before. Some families have more discretionary income but also less time to spend with their children. Children have always played some role in decisions about family purchases, but now the children have more money, both because parents earn more and because some parents – the “guilt factor” – seek to compensate for the lack of time by giving their children more money.

Corporate marketers – knowing that brand loyalty is established early – have moved into this newly emerging territory. Every corner of children’s lives is now viewed as potentially exploitable. Children have niche media networks of their own, video games and DVDs, all with their own product tie-ins and advertisements. Many schools have established marketing relationships with suppliers of soft drinks and other junk foods.

Channel One, the corporate sponsored news program for high school students, is a mandatory part of the school day in many U.S. public schools. The volume of ads designed specifically for children has escalated. Most importantly, so has the content of those ads. Whereas in the twenties advertisers had to convince mothers that the product was good for the child, today’s ads are based on the “nag factor,” encouraging the child to nag the parents into the purchase. Advertisers portray themselves in league with the child to promote children’s autonomy.

There is much to be said for giving children more voice in their own consumer and lifestyle choices. Schor recognizes and values changes in contemporary understandings of childhood. She has no sympathy for an era when children could be seen but not heard. Nonetheless, she reminds us that it is a strange notion of autonomy that is so clearly dominated and inspired by one set of corporate defined options. Children have little real autonomy when their days are dominated by ad campaigns that routinely suggest their academic or social inadequacies absent the latest car, video game and makeup.

Children neither enjoy nor benefit from this latest dose of corporate-sponsored autonomy. In a recent poll among children age 9 to 14, more than 60 percent expressed concerns about ads continually trying to persuade them to buy things and nearly three quarters lamented a world where “you have to buy certain things to be cool.” Schor’s own work shows a clear causal connection between heavy levels of exposure to such commercial imagery and a range of behavioral problems.

Despite much talk about the conservatism of this era, citizens all across the political spectrum have been concerned about the corporate consolidation of the mass media, which remain less popular than most politicians. A political push to eliminate commercial advertising from children’s media and schools could gain traction. Short of that, Schor points out that some school districts have now given middle-school children the facilities and training to prepare news programming on their own – a child inspired answer to Channel One.

More broadly, the salience of such issues as childhood obesity suggest both the need and the possibility that parents and children can put larger issues about the control of time and culture on the political agenda.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net