With the emergence of more social media, the youngest, most technologically savvy are some of the first to join the trend. Some of the social sites that children are joining include: Webkins, Planet Bratz Fan Club, Club Penguin and many more.
Children are able to register as users on these sites to explore worlds, play games, talk to friends etc. What they don't know, is that the surveys and registration that they fill out, is only ammo for marketers and advertisers to target products directly towards them.
Many of the registrations begin with general questions such as birth date, gender and name. This is so that advertisers can target the correct gender and age group for toys and products. Some of the sites ask fun questions periodically like, your favorite TV show or your favorite hobby. This only opens the window more to specifically targeted ads that the children will be attacked with.
Advertisements towards children are not only banner ads on websites, but they encompass the games and activities that children participate in online. Advertisers have made websites, such as the NabiscoWorld site, directly geared towards children with games that children can play titled instead of pinball, "Triscuit Power Balls". This attracts children to the website where they want to play the Triscuit game. They are blind to the advertisement, but later in the day at the grocery store with Dad they will remember the Triscuit brand. Score one advertisers.
In our society, children are bombarded by advertisements day after day, so they have become blind to many of them. This has caused advertisers to look for more intrusive ways to get inside the children's head. They are hooking children at a young age to products such as macaroni and cheese with images of Sponge Bob hoping to create lifetime customers. What they are really creating is a generation of consumer spend-aholics.
Children spend more of their parents' money now on toys, food, beauty products and expensive clothes than ever before. Children's' products should be ethically designed to increase knowledge or personal growth for the child. However, today, children's' products are merely a means for a company to make money. It would not surprise me to see the amount of debt rise dramatically in not-so future generations. Advertisers immoral actions are in part to blame for much of the materialistic incline that we have seen in our children. Grow some...morals advertisers!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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2 comments:
This is our society works, its materialism and everyone is a part of it one way or another unless you choose to live under that bridge. Advertising is something kids will have to learn how to ignore at a young age, so when they become the ripe age of 22 they will not give half a sh@#.
First of all, yes, America is a consumer society. Its what we are built on. What my blog is about is the immoral, unhealthy advertising towards children. They are teaching children, from the age of toddlers, to want expensive clothes like Ralph Lauren. They directly target children to fast food restaurants like McDonalds with Happy Meals and toys; not to mention using characters such as Sponge Bob as a spokesman. I know you don't think thats good for children right Ben?... Pumping them full of trans-fat and sugared soda. Or do you? This is immoral to do to children because they are not learning how to not give a sh@#. Being bombarded by these advertisements teaches unhealthy behaviors and terrible spending habits from BIRTH. This is not ok and I don't think you can, in ANY way, argue otherwise. Read a book!
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