Consumer culture among children has transitioned from a secondary role to a primary role during the past few decades. Children are becoming more aware of their consumer power. Everywhere one looks today, there is marketing strategy geared towards minors, and really doesn’t matter what the age. The purchasing power given to children rests with their family’s financial situation; it can be assumed the higher economic class the more money there is to spend for the child’s needs. However, this is not always the case. Some parent’s restrict child spending, because of the life lessons than can be taught from regulated spending. This essay will examine the increasing childhood consumer marketplace, and the parenting approaches of families. …show more content…
Daniel Cook is a Sociologist at Rutgers University who studies youth and consumption. His article on the empowerment of children in the marketplace demonstrates on an economic scale how childhood consumption has emerged and transformed the homes power structure (Cook 2007:37-52). Child consumers are a major player in the economy, it is estimated that their spending was 250billion at the turn of the century, and it may be assumed that consumer spending by children has far exceeded that since (Cool 2007:38). The shift of power from the parents to children seems like a fallacy, but their market share keeps expanding. This transfer of economic capital doesn’t occur because young children are working high paying jobs, but because parents see the value of their kid’s dignity through private ownership of consumables. The argument I am proposing is that there are two forces at hand here expanding the consumption for the youth. One is their social wellbeing at mainstream level of analysis and two marketers, but to what came first is a more of mystery and negated in light of the social reality of purchasing power. Private enterprises have seen a burgeoning market to make a lot of money off the youth of America. This privatization of children culture, to be packaged and sold has lead to the empowerment of children in the household. Cook, talked about how marketing schemes are targeted at letting children know that they are empowered. An example he used was “girl-power” (used from the all girl band-Spice Girls) as a way of demonstrating female liberation (Cook 2007:44-45). Grabbing the attention of children is the goal of marketers. If they can do that then the battle is half won. With the distinction of empowerment through products, transitive empowerment is also included in Cook’s analysis. He
Swimme, Brian. “How Do Our Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism”. The Human Experience: Who Am I?. 8th ed. Winthrop University: Rock Hill SC, 2012. 155-157. Print.
In fact, family is the bridge of life world. During the family, children learn how to relate with institutions, whether in school officials, healthcare professionals, and assorted government officials. In middle class, children are more on interaction with institutions. Alexander, as an example, learns from his parents that he has the right to speak up and gathering his thoughts in advance when he has to deal with institutions. He interrupts his doctor’s conversation with his mother and asks question to his doctor. By contract, children in working class or poor families frequently seem cautious and constrained. Harold primarily answers questions from his doctor rather than posing his own. Thus, Alexander is assertive and confident in dealing with professional institution unlike Harold who is reserved. Therefore, children’s ability to deal with professional’s institutions is affected by parenting
Eric schlosser, a writer for Atlantic Monthly, addresses in his article, “Kid Kustomer”, the various marketing strategies used on children to American parents after the success of ads for the young. Schlosser exemplifies how companies market their products to children in order to convince parents to recognize the fact that the advertisements produced by companies turn children into customers. He employs parallel syntax, figurative language, and a objective tone to accomplish his goal.
This survey was born out of concern that there are few statistics on the effects of marketing industry’s impact on our youth. Just as the article on “Consuming Kids” raises awareness about children being lured into believing they can’t live without things and the problems rising out of it. This survey makes us aware of how this market is willing to sacrifice the sanctity of family life by undermining the parents via their television while children watch mega hours of uninterrupted commercials aimed at them. These surveys were compared with a couple of sparsely completed other ones. The respondents felt that problems such as: aggressiveness, materialism, obesity, lack of creativity, overly sexualized behavior and self-esteem, were detrimentally influenced by the youth marketing industry.
Kids these days are constantly looking to get the next best thing, or act how the “popular” people would act. In the article “Commodifying Kids: The Forgotten Crisis,” Giroux talks about the affects the media market is having on children of today. The media is “brainwashing” kids into buying their products and catching them while they are young. The children of today are measuring their worth by the things they own or the way they act, which is largely due in part to the media market. While I do agree with Giroux on how the media market is to blame for the strong influence of children, I also think that the parents should share some of the blame for giving into their child’s desires and buying and encouraging them to get the top products.
Conversely, Albanese (2010) and Bergsma (2014) stepped into the same thought of how poverty affects student learning and participation in school activities For example; Children are at the most vulnerable stage of upbringing. Mainly this stage of vulnerability occurs outside of the home and possible in school. Many children face the problems of being teased because they are poor and secluded from the main stream children at schools. Children begin to believe what others constantly tell them and live under the pressure of conforming to the other school kids. Simple items such as clothing and accessories are the greatest status symbols in school. Often the penniless children feel embarrassed because they do not have the clothing and t...
Family functions as a very important social institution, and the primary agent of socialization (Snedker, 10/19/2016). To expand, parents and other family members are the first exposure to the world children have, and therefore leave a lasting impact on kids in terms of how they see themselves and the people around them. However, this impact isn’t always positive. This especially shows in the differences between upper and lower income families. For example, In Lareau’s piece Invisible Inequality, two boys in families with different SESs, are studied. On one hand, the boy in the higher SES family had less freedom and spent more time in extracurricular activities. Due to this, he acquired more cultural capital than the other boy. This boy’s mother also encouraged him to to be more assertive and confident with authority figures, so he was able to learn various life skills, such as speaking to a doctor, that the other boy wasn’t able to. The boy from the lower SES family however, spent much more time with other children and watching television. These factors play out to make the lower SES boy less confident and more confined than the other boy (Lareau,
Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College, is the author of Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool and many other books on the topic of American Consumption. Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College. In this article, Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool, Schor talks about what cool is and how it has affected the culture of advertising and ideals. From Schor’s writing we can try to understand why she wrote about this topic and how she feels about the methods of advertising used for kids, providing facts for each of her main statements.
According to Rocker- Gladen, while attempting to teach her students about consumerism, one recurring comment students normally make about consumerism, it is their parents’ responsibility to monitor their exposure to consumerism. This alarming fact is that not every child has parents whom are actively involved in their child’s development. Turkle emphasized that by parents giving their kids cell phones this can lead them to developing a new state of dependence. Instead of the youth seeking their parent’s advice about their ideas and attitudes, they are more likely resort to their inexperienced peers. This is as a result of the “always on, always contented” communication culture that is being the...
... my classroom I have created an environment where we are a family and as a whole school we are a village where interdependence is celebrated and we work together to do the best for our children and each other. In our village we all need to love and be loved. If I didn’t love my children I would not be catering for their needs. For successful learning to take place the children need to feel a sense of worth and meaning. Each child in my class is here for a reason and are valued as individuals whose lives are meaningful and so worthwhile (Groome, 1998, p. 93).
The land of the free, brave and consumerism is what the United States has become today. The marketing industry is exploiting children through advertisement, which is ridiculously unfair to children. We are around advertisement and marketing where ever we go; at times, we don't even notice that we are being targeted to spend our money. As a matter of fact, we live to buy; we need and want things constantly, and it will never stop. The film, Consuming Kids , written by Adriana Barbaro and directed by Jeremy Earp, highlights children as this powerful demographic, with billions of dollars in buying power, but the lack of understanding of marketers’ aggressive strategies. Children are easily influenced and taken advantage of, which is why commercialization of children needs to stop. Commercialization to children leads to problems that parents do not even know are happening such as social, future, and rewired childhood problems. Government regulations need to put a stop to corporations that live, breathe and sell the idea of consumerism to children and instead show that genuine relationships and values are what are important.
Being a modern teenager high school, I tend to forget about the important values in life that I’m entitled to everyday. School seems to take up the majority of my attention and time. I have become accustomed to the daily routine as a student. Sleep, school, study, repeat. The fast paced environment I’m always surrounded in makes me forget the value of time. However, at the end of the day, I’m always reminded of the people and simple moments I appreciate and what influences me the most. Being the middle child of two boys, I was always, and currently, am the “little girl” of the family. The middle child stereotype has a bad reputation enough, what’s worse than being the only girl in the family? Nevertheless, nobody matters more than me than
Across America in homes, schools, and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties.
... become important points of reference. They provide social contexts for shaping the day- to- day behaviour of adolescents, and encourage conformity to norms and values. Despite much popular mythology about 'the generation gap', such standards are startlingly similar to parental values, though the similarities are masked by different youth styles or expressions. Such groupings clearly have a developmental potential in enabling young people to make the social adjustments necessary for them to operate in adult society.
There are many types of family that exists in today’s society, each important to the upbringing of any children of which may be apart of it.