Childhood Consumerism And Consumption Media Essay

During the rise of consumer culture in the nineteenth century, children and childhood were called on to fulfill a range of important roles. In addition to being consumers themselves, the young functioned as both goods to be used and consumed by adults and as proof that middle-class materialist ventures were assisting in the formation of a more ethical society. Children also provided necessary labor and raw material for industry. However, in today’s corporate world, youth culture is largely the creation of marketers, corporations and those interested in getting rich off youth through popular culture. The young people have been targeted by the big business and the advertising industry to bolster their revenue. Although primarily discussing the American situation, the globalization of youth culture means the findings are relevant to most of the world. Indeed, given the global reach of such icons of American popular culture as MTV, McDonald’s and Coke, almost no culture is immune from its effect.

Unlike in the past centuries, presently children and teens are growing up in a world made up of advertisers, marketers and corporate giants who are doing all they can to drain every last dollar out of the lucrative youth market. And they are succeeding. Douglas Rushkoff media critic said;

“For today’s teens, a walk in the street may as well be a stroll through the mall. Anywhere they rest their eyes; they’ll be exposed to a marketing message. A typical American teenager will process over 3,000 discrete advertisements in a single day, and 10 million by the time they’re 18. Kids are also consuming massive quantities of entertainment media. It’s a blizzard of brands, all competing for the same kids. To win teens’ loyalty, marketers believe, they have to speak their language the best. So they study them carefully, as an anthropologist would an exotic native culture,” (Mooks and Midriffs, 2006).

They spend their days browsing through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the next big thing, which will attract the attention of their prey, a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year. Businesses are creating and selling popular culture which has made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. They simply not reflecting teen

desires, rather they are manufacturing those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market.

Not only are they selling the goods but they are also dictating the market and consumer behavior. Like Mark Crispin Miller said, “advertising has always sold anxiety, and it certainly sells anxiety to the young people. It’s always telling them they’re losers unless they’re cool” (Merchants of cool, 2000). Corporations invest a lot of money just to research what is cool and what is not. The problem is, cool keeps changing, simply because kids keep changing. And the corporations struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in cool. The corporate world deals with this problem not by just mapping cool, but to create cool. This in fact has become much of the strategy of the businesses to create cool, while claiming to simply be reflecting cool. Thus they are no longer selling a product, they are selling a lifestyle. This process is done in part by doing market research into what teens like, then repackaging and re-selling it back to them. Marketers extensively interview young people to see what they wear, what they eat, what they buy, what they listen to, and so on, then repackage the results into a sellable commodity. Robert McChesney explained:

The entertainment companies, which are a handful of massive conglomerates that own four of the five music companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States-those same companies also own all the film studios, all the major TV networks, all the TV stations pretty much in the 10 largest markets. They own all or part of every single commercial cable channel. They look at the teen market as part of this massive empire that they’re colonizing. . . . Teens are like Africa . . . that they’re going to take over, and their weaponry are films, music, books, CDs, Internet access, clothing, amusement parks, sports teams. That’s all this weaponry they have to make money off of this market.

Everything on MTV is a commercial. . . . Sometimes it’s an explicit advertisement paid for by a company to sell a product. Sometimes it’s going to be a video for a music company there to sell music. Sometimes it’s going to be the set that’s filled with trendy clothes and stuff there to sell a look that will include products on that set. Sometimes it will be a show about an upcoming movie paid for by the studio, though you don’t know it, to hype a movie that’s coming out from Hollywood. But everything’s an infomercial. There is no non-commercial part of MTV, (Cultural Manipulation, 2004).

Young people’s incomes continue to grow, as does their influence over their food and drink intake and personal care use. The youth’s market is evolving, making stereotypical views of children outdated. According to Global Issues;

On average children watch 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials annually. Businesses spend about $15-17 billion advertising to children in the US. $160 billion is spent annually by teens. Children (under 12) spend almost $18 billion a year. 8-12 year olds this category has more influence on the market spend more than $30 billion a year. The young people influence parental spending over $130-670 billion a year, (Anup Shah, 2008)

Mark Crispin Miller said: “Teenagers suffer from acute self-consciousness to begin with. Their bodies are changing and they feel awkward and they often are awkward. So that’s already a kind of psychological problem, a burden for most kids. This system comes along and heightens that anxiety by constantly confronting every kid with a kind of mirror in which you’re supposed to look at yourself and like what you see or not like what you see, depending on whether you’ve bought the stuff that they’re selling,” (interview: Mark Crispin Miller). This is due mainly to the company’s advertising strategies suggesting sexuality; beauty for girls and for boys there is an emphasis to portray them as tough.

Seeing that this has become a huge world problem some countries have taken an initiative to control commercials targeting young people. For example in Sweden banned commercials during children’s prime time. The European Union is deliberating issues related to advertising targeting the young people, whether they should be a European wide ban or a regulation. There is an international biannual conference that is organized with aim of dealing with topics such as: childhood consumption practices, children’s roles in the consumer decision-making process, media, consumption and youth culture, public policy and media regulation. Contrary to what is happening Europe in the US business is business. Since the constitution recognizes children to have their rights it is hard for parents to fully deal with the situation without government’s support.

The best way to deal with this is for the concerned parties, especially the government, teachers and parents join hands into educating the better ways on spending and how these so called corporate friends are manipulating them into spending. And since consumerism among the youth has become a culture it is better to approach the subject with respect if the message is to be effective.