UofT Children and New Technologies Advertisements Discussion

In what new ways might new technologies, like the internet and smart phones or tablets, be making children more vulnerable to advertising? Do you see these advertising tools as somehow different from advertising vehicles used in the past (like television, radio, magazines, and billboards)? Explain what you mean, specifically, beyond yes/no answers.

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The Material Child
Growing Up in
Consumer Culture
DAVID BUCKINGHAM
polity
Copyright (() David Buckingham 2011
The right of David Buckingham to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted
in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2011 by Polity Press
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Introduction
Over the past decade, the figure of the child consumer has been the focus
of increasing attention and debate. On the one hand, children have become
more and more important (and indeed lucrative) both as a market in their
own tight and as a means to reach adult markets. Companies are using a
much wider range of marketing techniques, which go well beyond
conventional advertising; and they are targeting children directly at an everyoungerage. Marketers often claim that children are becoming’ empowered’
in this new commercial environment: the market is seen to be responding
to needs and desires on the part of children that have hitherto been largely
ignored or marginalized, not least because of the social dominance of
adults.
Yet, on the other hand, there is a growing number of popular publications
bemoaning the apparent ‘commercialization’ of childhood. This argument
seems to presume that children used to live in an essentially non-commercial
world; and that their entry into the marketplace over the past several
decades has had a wide range of negative consequences for their wellbeing.
Commercialization is seen to cause harm to many aspects of children’s
physical and mental health, as well as generating concerns about issues
such as ‘sexualization’ and ‘materialism’. Such campaigning publications
rypically regard children not as empowered, but rather as powerless victims
of commercial manipulation and exploitation.
Furthermore, as we shall see, many critics claim that a ‘consumerist’
orientation now pervades all aspects of the social world in capitalist
societies, and that users of non-commercial services such as health and
education are increasingly positioned (and have come to see themselves)
as consumers. Yet children are also likely to be surrounded by messages
about the dangers of consumerism and materialism and by exhortations
to recycle or to enjoy what is ‘free’ in life, such as friendship or nature often paradoxically purveyed by commercial media themselves.
This book seeks to refute the popular view of children as incompetent
and vulnerable consumers that is espoused by many of the campaigners;
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The material child
but it also rejects the celebratory account of consumption as an expression
of children’s power and autonomy. Rather, it aims to challenge the terms
in which the social issue of children’s consumption is typically framed and
understood; and in the process, to question how human agency and
identity are experienced in late modem ‘consumer societies’. To see
children’s role in the consumer market simply in terms of a dyadic
relationship between children and marketers – whether we see that
relationship as one of manipulation or of empowerment-is to oversimplify
the issue.
Instead, I propose a view of children’s consumption as inextricably
embedded within wider networks of social relationships; and I argue that,
in modern industrial (and ‘post industrial’) societies, consumption is a
domain both of constraint and control, and of choice and creativity. This
approach, I suggest, takes us beyond the moralistic and sentimental views
about children’s consumption that tend to dominate the public debate. It
also helps us to recognize some of the ironies and complexities of
contemporary consumer culture, and particularly of the more ‘interactive’
or ‘participatory’ forms that are currently emerging.
I understand ‘consumption’ in broad terms. Consumption is not just
about the purchasing of goods, but also about the ways in which they are
used, appropriated and adapted, both individually and collectively. It is not
just about goods, but also about services – not just about what you possess,
but also about what you are able to do. Studying children’s consumption
means looking not only at advertising and marketing, but also at the many
other ways in which commercial forces and market relations affect children’s
environment and their social and cultural experiences. It is not only about
toys or clothes or food, but also about media, about leisure and about
education. Ultimately, it is not just about objects or commodities, but also
about social meanings and pleasures.
It is for these reasons that I talk about consumer culture, and not just
about consumption. The term ‘culture’ is, of course, a complex and loaded
one; but for me it implies a fundamental interest in how meanings are
cr~ated within a given social context, and in consumption as a means of
communicating or signifying meaning. As Don Slater (1997: 8) puts it,
·consumer culture denotes a social arrangement in which the relation
between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of
life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is
mediated through markets’. From this perspective, we would need to resist
the simple opposition between commerce and culture on which a great
deal of discussion of this issue is premised. This is particularly true of
Introduction
3
children: as Dan Cook (2004) has argued, the relation between children
and the market is frequently seen in terms of the relation between the
sacred and the profane – an opposition which makes the discussion of
‘children’s consumer culture’ appear almost sacrilegious.
This emphasis on meaning and communication is not, of course, to
imply that consumers are autonomous or all-powerful, or that they can
make any meanings they choose: commercial producers and marketers
obviously set constraints and parameters, and provide and shape the
resources that make consumption possible. Social relationships construct
and mediate consumer culture, yet consumer culture in turn shapes the
nature and meaning of social relationships. As we shall see, this is a complex
dynamic, whose consequences are often unpredictable and hard to pin
down.
Even so, this is not a book about the commercialization of childhood.
Commercial influences do not impinge upon or invade childhood as if
from outside; nor are they an inexorable force that entirely determines
children’s experiences. Rather, contemporary childhood takes place in and
through market relations – as indeed it has done for centuries. Ultimately,
consumption is part of the lived experience of capitalism; and children do
not stand outside that, in some pure or unsullied space, even if that is what
some commentators appear to imagine or wish.
The first three chapters provide the theoretical grounding for the book
as a whole. Chapter I reviews the popular debate about children’s
consumption, contrasting the rhetoric of the campaigners with that of the
new wave of children’s marketers. Chapter Z introduces theories of
consumption as they have been developed largely in relation to adults,
while chapter 3 looks at the various ways in which children’s consumption
has been addressed in theory and research. Collectively, these chapters
argue for a broader socio-cultural approach to children’s consumption that
moves beyond the simple polarization introduced above.
Chapters 4 and 5 look, respectively, at the history of children’s
consumption, and at the contemporary children’s market. These chapters
point to some considerable continuities here, both in the strategies adopted
by marketers and in the ambivalence with which they are viewed by
parents and children. However, they also point to some significant shifts in
the children’s market, not least with the emergence of digital marketing,
and discuss some of the ethical problems they raise.
Chapters 6 and 7 provide a critical analysis of two key concerns in the
recent debate about children’s consumption, namely obesity and
‘sexualization’. These chapters challenge the terms in which these issues
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The material child
have been framed both within the public debate and within psychological
research, and counterpose some of the rhetoric with evidence from
empirical studies with children themselves.
Chapters 8 and 9 explore two aspects of the social relationships in which
children’s consumption occurs: namely, relationships with parents and with
peers. Here again, I seek to challenge some of the terms in which these
issues are understood – for example in popular labels like ‘pester power’
and ‘peer pressure’. I also seek to provide an alternative to views of
children’s consumption that see it as a simple matter of cause-and-effect.
In chapters 10 and 11, the attention shifrs away from consumption itself
to focus on the ways in which market relations shape children’s experiences
more broadly. These chapters focus on two areas- children’s television and
education – that in recent years have increasingly come to be led by
commercial interests and commercial models. AB I suggest, these
developments have had some significant, albeit ambivalent, consequences
for children in particular.
Chapter 12 is a brief conclusion, which picks up a theme that serves as
a running thread throughout the book, and particularly through the latter
chapters: this is the issue of inequality. I argue that a consumer society
tends to exacerbate some of the negative consequences of inequality; but
that simply regulating the activities of marketers is unlikely to make a
significant difference to the broader structures that create inequality in the
first place.
This book is intended to provide an overview of a complex and diverse
field; but it is also a book with a definite standpoint. It draws on a wide
range of research, some of which is necessarily dealt with in a very
summary form. I hope that it will stimulate further work in this area, and
contribute to a more informed and productive public debate about one of
the most pressing and controversial issues of our times.
1
Exploited or empowered?
Constructing the child consumer
From the moment they are born, children today are already consumers.
Contemporary childhoods are lived out in a world of commercial goods
and services. Marketing to children is by no means new, but children now
play an increasingly important role, both as consumers in their own right
and as influences on parents. They are exposed to a growing number and
range of commercial messages, which enend far beyond traditional media
advertising. They are surrounded by invitations and inducements to buy
and to consume; and commercial forces also increasingly impact on their
experiences in areas such as public broadcasting, education and play.
Consumer culture offers children a wide range of opportunities and
experiences that they would not have enjoyed in earlier times. Yet, far from
being welcomed or celebrated, children’s consumption has often been
perceived as an urgent social problem. Politicians, religious leaders, child
welfare campaigners and consumer rights groups – not to mention armies
of newspaper columnists and media pundits – routinely express concern
and outrage at the harmful influence of advertising and marketing on
children. Such concern is not confined to a single moral or political
perspective: traditional conservatives and anti-capitalist activists, feminists
and religious fundamentalists, all join forces in a chorus of condemnation.
Children, they argue, should be kept away from hannful commercial
influences: advertising and marketing to children should be banned, and
parents should seek to raise their children in a ‘commercial-free’
environment. In these debates, consumerism is often tied up with a series
of other social problems. Advertising and marketing are blamed for causing
obesity and eating disorders, for encouraging premature sexualization, for
promoting materialistic values, and for inciting conflict within the family
and the peer group. Consumerism, it would seem, is destroying the
fundamental values of childhood – and, in the process, it is making
children’s and parents’ lives a misery
And yet the focus of the objections here is often far from clearly defined.
‘Junk food’ advertising, sexy underage fashion models and deceptive
5
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The material child
marketing online are all precise enough as targets. But the criticisms of
consumerism and the commercial world often range much more broadly:
indeed, the debate often seems to be about the wholesale destruction of
childhood itself. So are we only talking about advertising and marketing
here, or about the economic system as a whole? Is ‘consumption’ just about
buying stuff, or about using it too? Where does ‘the commercial world’
begin and end- and where might we find a ‘non-commercial world’? Does
the act of consumption inevitably involve sets of values or ideologies, such
as ‘consumerism’ or ‘materialism’ – and how are these to be identified?
Why are certain kinds of consumption implicitly seen to be acceptable buying books or classical music CDs, or paying for your children to attend
ballet classes – while others are not? Is the problem one of excessive
consumption, or of people having too much money to spend – and, if so,
who defines what counts as ‘too much’?
Such arguments are certainly applied to adults, yet they seem to carry
a unique force when it comes to children. Parents are frequently urged to
resist consumerism on behalf of their children: only then, it would seem,
will children be able to experience a good or proper childhood. Yet on what
basis are some consumer products perceived to be inappropriate for
children in general, or for children at particular ages? Why are some things
deemed acceptable for adults, and not for children? Are children in general
somehow more vulnerable than adults to the harmful behaviours and
values apparently promoted by consumer culture? In what sense is it even
possible, in a modem capitalist society for children to be kept away from
commercial influences – and what might be the negative consequences of
seeking to do so? What are the alternative values that somehow stand
outside the commercial world, and which might enable children and
parents to resist its influence?
The construction of social problems
These questions point to the fact that the ‘problem’ of the child consumer
is typically defined in quite particular ways. At stake are assumptions both
about consumption – about what consumption is, and about ‘good’ and
‘bad’ consumption – and about children – about what children essentially
are or should be, and about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ childhoods. These assumptions
are not given statements of fact, and they are not neutral. On the contrary,
the figure of the child consumer is framed and constructed in specific ways,
which thereby marginalize or prevent other ways of thinking about the
issue.
Exploited or empowered!
7
In recent years, analyses of social problems have explored such questions
from a ‘social constructionist’ perspective. Broadly speaking, social
problems can be defined as phenomena that are believed to be morally
wrong, and that are seen to require positive intervention. Yet the things
we identify and categorize as social problems are not stable or fixed. On
the contrary, problems are defined in different ways in different social and
cultural settings, and people often disagree about how they should be
understood. Problems or issues are not simply given, but actively
constructed. Groups of people have to identify, select and name them:
problems must be categorized and typified in particular ways in order to
become the focus of public attention. The metaphor of ‘framing’ is often
used here: putting a problem into a frame serves to define it and focus
attention on it, but it also detracts attention away from what lies outside
the frame, and thereby limits the ways in which we can understand the
problem in the first place.
Social constructionists suggest that in the more diverse and fluid context
of contemporary societies, there is less consensus about right and wrong;
and, accordingly, the construction of social problems is often a contested
process, in which feelings may increasingly come to count for more than
logic or evidence (Loseke, 2003). The actions of ‘claims-makers’ play a
central role in this process. Studies have explored how key claims-makers
– campaigners, politicians, experts, media commentators – work to define
a social problem and increase its public visibility, often in pursuit of their
own sectional interests. This typically entails mobilizing forms of rhetoric.
Claims-makers compete with each other for media attention, often by
overstating the scale of the problem, focusing on dramatic or spectacular
manifestations, and occasionally drawing on dubious expert or scientific
evidence (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988). Such claims are often cumulative and
mutually reinforcing, and so the scope of the problem tends to expand. The
claims with most power to persuade are those that reflect other dominant
themes – and indeed stereotypes and prejudices – within the culture.
Simple claims are more effective than complicated ones; and formulaic
stories featuring ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ – often involving melodramatic
narratives of corruption and decline – are less likely to be challenged, not
least because they can invoke powerful emotions. This is most evidently
the case with the generation of ‘moral panics’ – a phenomenon that has,
of course, been the focus of a great deal of sociological and historical
analysis (e.g. Barker, 1984; Cohen, 2002; Springhall, 1998).
The figure of the child – or perhaps a certain idea of childhood – is often
crucial here. As Joel Best ( I 990, I 994) and others have noted, the
8
The material child
contemporary rise to prominence of child abuse as a social issue can be
analysed in this way. Child abuse in various forms has always existed; but
the processes through which it is defined – and indeed what counts as child
abuse – have changed significantly over time. During the 1980s and 1990s
in particular, various concerns about ‘threatened children’ – from homeless
children to ‘crack babies’ to the victims of paedophiles – came to dominate
the public agenda. Children were increasingly presented as endangered and
vulnerable to harm; and parents were urged to take responsibility for their
protection, and for the development of a healthy personality. As Best
argues, contemporary images of children as victims resonate very effectively
with the idealized, sentimental image of childhood that became culturally
dominant in the nineteenth century, initially among the middle class.
Children themselves are also relatively low in the hierarchy of claimsmakers: they are rarely consulted – for example in media or policy debates
– thus leaving the way clear for adults to make claims on their behalf
(Loseke, 2003).
Indeed, making children the focus of claims often provides a powerful
means of pressing emotional ‘buttons’, and hence of commanding assent,
even when the actual target is much broader. If harmful influences in
society can be shown to impact specifically on children, the argument for
controlling those influences comes to appear much stronger. For example,
Philip Jenkins (1992) provides a detailed study of the role of claims-makers
and ‘moral entrepreneurs’ in the moral panics around child abuse – from
sexual violence to paedophilia to Satanic rituals-which became so prevalent
in Britain during the 1980s. As Jenkins shows, campaigns against
homosexuality were redefined as campaigns against paedophiles; campaigns
against pornography became campaigns against child pornography; and
campaigns against immorality and Satanism become campaigns against
ritualistic child abuse. Those who had the temerity to doubt spectacular
claims about the epidemic proportions of such phenomena – or to question
the need for censorious or authoritarian forms of action – could thereby
easily be stigmatized as hostile to children. While some of the campaigns
Jenkins identifies have faded, others have replaced them, and some have
become steadily more prominent: concerns about childhood have become
a powerful dimension of much broader assertions about the unravelling
of the social fabric, and the moral collapse of what the Conservatives call
‘broken Britain’.
The point here is not that these problems are merely illusory, or just a
matter of irrational panic – although that probably is the case with some
of the examples analysed by Jenkins. Rather, the focus of analysis is on
Explnited or empowered/
9
how the problem is socially defined and constructed, and by whom; on
the assumptions and emotional responses that are invoked in the process;
and on the ways in which alternative perspectives are thereby excluded. In
particular, as Jenkins (1992), Sternheimer (2010) and others argue, there
is a risk that the construction and framing of specific social problems
may divert attention away from more complex, more intractable issues notably those which relate to the economy, and to social deprivation and
inequality.
The problem of the child consumer
To what extent might we see the ‘problem’ of children and consumption
in these terms? In recent years, there has been a flurry of popular critical
publications about children and consumer culture, following in the wake
of Naomi Klein’s influential No Logo (2001). Prominent examples include
Juliet Schor’s Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer
Culture (2004), Susan Linn’s Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood
(2004), Alissa Quart’s Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers (2003),
Daniel Acuff and Robert Reiher’s Kidnapped: How Irresponsible Marketers are
Stealing the Minds of Your Children (2005) and, in the UK, Ed Mayo and
Agnes Nairn’s Consumer Kids: How Big Business is Grooming Our Children for
Profit (2009). To be sure, there are some important differences among these
publications. For example, Schor’s is the most academic, and presents
detailed statistical evidence from a psychological study of the links between
consumption and ‘materialism’; while Quart’s is essentially a journalistic
expose of the teen marketing industry. As ‘claims-makers’, the authors also
speak from different positions: Mayo, for example, is the director of
a consumer pressure group, while Linn is a child psychiatrist, and Acuff
and Reiher are both marketing consultants, However, these books share a
highly critical view of the negative influence of advertising and marketing
on children’s lives: they all have a strong campaigning edge, and several
of them conclude with a ‘manifesto’ and a series of links to activist
organizations.
On one level, the arguments being made here are far from new. One can
look back to similar assertions about the harmful influence of advertising
being made in the 1970s, for example by campaigning groups like Action
for Children’s Television in the United States (see Hendershot, 1998; Seiter,
1993), However, there is a new tone of urgency here: these critics argue
that contemporary marketing is significantly more sophisticated, and that
children are now caught up in a powerful, highly manipulative form of
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The material child
consumer culture that is almost impossible for them to escape or resist.
They accuse advertisers and marketers of using increasingly devious and
deceitful techniques in order to target children, and of flouting legal
regulations on the promotion of harmful producrs. They argue that
children are being targeted at a younger and younger age, and that the
boundaries between childhood, youth and adulthood are being progressively
eroded, as children increasingly gain access to sexual and violent material.
According to these critics, this new commercial culture is actively opposed
to children’s wellbeing and their best interests.
While there are certainly truths in some of these claims, all these books
link the issue of consumerism with other time-honoured concerns about
media and childhood, thereby broadening the scope of the problem and
creating a pictUre of wholesale decline. Thus, as well as turning children
into premature consumers, the media are accused of promoting sex and
violence, junk food, drugs, tobacco and alcohol, gender stereotypes and
false moral values, as well as contributing to an ‘epidemic’ of mental health
disorders, anxiety, stress and harmful addictions (including the addiction
to consumption itself). Today’s children suffer from what Linn calls
‘impulsivity’ or Acuff and Reiher call ‘Invisible and Intangible Information
Overload’ (IIIO). Children’s play has been devalued, and their capacity for
creative experience has been destroyed, in favour of conformity and
superficial, materialistic values.
Of course, this is a familiar litany, which tends to confuse very different
kinds of effecrs and influences; and it is informed by a much wider critique
of ‘consumerism’, which sees it as fundamentally opposed to positive
moral or human values. Linn (2004), for example, describes consumerism
as an attack on democracy and family values, and on ‘the spiritual,
humanistic, or ineffable splendors of life’ (p. 185). This ties in with a
broader account of social and cultural decline, which sees children as
increasingly threatened and endangered. Thus, Acuff and Reiher (2005)
begin their book by declaring: ‘Parents, your children today are in greater
physical, psyrhological, emotional, and ethical danger than during any
other era of modern civilization’ (p. xii).
Perhaps paradoxically, the most vehement of these texts is that written
by the two marketing consultants, Acuff and Reiher, whose biographies
boast an extensive list of high-profile corporate clients. These authors
employ the full range of rhetorical strategies that are characteristic of
social problems claims-makers. Parents are addressed – via the collective
‘we’ – as partners in a crusade. A large collection of authorities is enlisted
in support, by means of short (and frequently platitudinous) quotations
Exploited or empaweredf
11
that scatter the text, seemingly at random, from Billy Graham and Martin
Luther to Albert Einstein, James Baldwin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Scientific
evidence, principally drawn from infant neuroscience (brain science’) and
developmental psychology, is presented as undisputed truth. The core
chapters of the book present lists of basic needs’, ‘core developmental
elements’ and ‘key vulnerabilities’ relating to children at each of Piaget’s
developmental stages. Yet these apparently scientific arguments about the
‘wiring’ of the brain and about ‘developmental blind spots’ are used to
justify what are clearly moral judgements, particularly about the influence
of sexual and violent content in the media – for example about ‘ageinappropriate sexuality’ and the promotion of ‘irresponsible attitudes’.
Lurking behind these judgements are further prejudices about taste and
cultural value. Commercial marketing is acceptable, it would seem, if it
promotes products that are ‘healthy’ or “wholesome’, but not if it relates
to things that the authors deem to be harmful. For each age group, Acuff
and Reiher present ‘a week in the life’ of an ideal and a dysfunctional
family, arranged in two parallel columns. While the good parents set
boundaries, preserve quality time and generally promote a healthy learning
environment, the bad parents are permissive and neglectful (they send
their children to daycare!), and allow their own enjoyment of popular
culture to act as a model for their children. The contrast here is so absolute
and stereotypical as to be comical – indeed, it rather resembles a meeting
between the Brady Bunch and the Bundy family from Married with Children.
While the teenagers from the good family are at their church group
meeting, listening to ‘soft rock’ and reading poetry, the bad ones are
wearing trenchcoats and miniskirts, playing violent computer games and
generally living the life of sex, drugs and gangsta rap.
Collectively, these texts tell a simple story of the struggle between good
and evil. Children are represented here as essentially innocent and helpless,
unable to resist the power of commercial marketing and media. They are
seduced, controlled, manipulated, exploited, brainwashed, bamboozled,
programmed and branded. They are seen as fundamentally passive,
vulnerable and defenceless – as ‘passive commercial fodder’, ‘cogs in a
wheel’ or, in the words of Acuff and Reiher, ‘sirring ducks’ and ‘easy prey’
for marketers. Yet, as with other such campaigns invoking children, these
books rarely include the voices of children themselves, or try to take
account of their perspectives: this is essentially a discourse generated by
adults on behalf of children.
The marketers, meanwhile, are the original Hidden Persuaders of
popular legend (and indeed Vance Packard’s classic Cold War paranoia
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The material child
about the thought-controlling power of subliminal advertising is quoted
approvingly by several of these books: Packard, 1957). Marketers are seen
to be engaged in a ‘war on children’: they bombard, assault, barrage, and
even subject them to ‘saruration bombing’. They ‘take children hostage’,
invade, violate and steal their minds, and betray their innocence and trust.
Even Mayo and Nairn (2009), who tend to represent children as more
sceptical and resistant to the appeals of advertising, nevertheless present
marketers in highly melodramatic terms. The subtitle of their book
effectively equates marketers with paedophiles, while terms such as
‘grooming’ and ‘stalking’, and the metaphor of the ‘child-catcher’, recur
throughout (on publication, an extract from the book was published in The
Times newspaper accompanied by a large image of the evil Robert
Helpmann character from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).
As the social constructionists would put it, this story resonates very
powerfully with the dominant ‘feeling rules’ of contemporary society
(Loseke, 2003). Children reside in the highest moral category: they are
constructed as blameless victims, innocent and morally pure. The marketers
represent their moral counterpart: they are the smug, evil villains of the
piece, deserving of our most vehement condemnation.
However, the intervening role of parents here is somewhat more
ambivalent and problematic. ‘Good’ parents – those implicitly addressed
by these books- exercise proper protection and control over their children,
while bad’ parents are liberal and permissive, indulging their own and
their children’s consumer desires. Ultimately, parents appear strangely
powerless in the face of the ‘onslaught’ of commercial marketing; and yet
they are also somehow to blame for what is happening to their children.
In this context, ‘good’ parents can all too easily slip into being bad’ parents,
whether as victims of ignorance or of their own lack of self-discipline. Acts
of consumption – whether by children or parents themselves – require
constant vigilance and supervision, ideally armed with the checklists and
‘toolboxes’ such publications provide. Thus, while all of these books call
for some kind of ban on marketing to children, or at least for much tighter
regulation, much of the onus for dealing with consumer culrure ultimately
falls to parents; and indeed much of the rhetoric appears designed to
inflame parental anxiety and guilt. The only solution, it seems, is for
parents to engage in counter-propaganda, to censor their children’s use of
media, or keep them locked away from corrupting commercial influences.
Only then, it would seem, when their lives are wholly supervised and
controlled, will children truly be free to be children once more.
Exploited or empowered/
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Childhood at risk
As I have implied, these concerns about the influence of advertising and
marketing on children are typically implicated within a broader narrative
about the fate of contemporary childhood. In this narrative, modern
childhood is characterized not as a period of carefree innocence, but as
one of danger and risk; and, indeed, as a time of anxiety, misery and stress.
While this bleak image of childhood has arguably been around for a long
time, it has become much more culturally dominant in the first decade of
the twenty-first century
The most spectacular focus of this concern is of course that contemporary
‘folk devil’, the predatory paedophile. Despite the fact that the large
majority of child abuse occurs within the family home, it is predominantly
understood – not least by children themselves – as a matter of ‘stranger
danger’. Indeed, it would seem from some popular accounts that the
paedophile is no longer lurking only in the street or in public spaces, but
in your child’s school or nursery, or indeed on the computer in your child’s
bedroom, Joel Best’s ( 1990) analysis of moral panics surrounding’ threatened
children’, noted above, suggests that the contemporary rhetoric of ‘childsaving’ is typically justified by using melodramatic images of children
menaced by deviants, in the form of paedophiles, child pornographers,
kidnappers, drug pushers and Satanic abusers. To this cast of evil-doers,
it would seem, can now be added the figure of the marketer as
child-catcher.
This growing concern over child safety has resulted in what some
commentators have seen as a culture of ‘over-protection’, and even of
‘paranoid parenting’ (Brooks, 2006; Furedi, 2008; Guldberg, 2008). Critics
of such developments recount tales of schools being banned from
videotaping children’s Christmas plays on the grounds that the tapes might
be obtained by paedophiles, or barring parents from sports events for fear
that child abusers might attend,’ At the time of writing, a group of leading
children’s authors in the UK has proposed to abandon readings of their
work in schools if they continue to be subjected to police checks designed
to identify sex criminals, 2
However, others argue that this ‘cocooning’ of childhood now extends
far beyond the fear of sexual abuse. At least in the UK, children are now
much more confined to their homes, and much less independently mobile,
than they were thirty years ago, Since the 1970s, ‘playing out’ in the street
or in open spaces has steadily been displaced by domestic entertainment
14
The material child
(particularly via television and computers) and – especially among more
aftluent classes – by supervised leisure activities such as organized sports,
music lessons and so forth (Valentine, 2004). An extensive ‘health and safety
industry’ has arisen to market ‘safety-conscious’ products to parents of
very young children (Martens, 2005), supported both by the general climate
of anxiety and by restrictive legislation, Mundane playground conflicts
between children have been subjected to new forms of therapeutic
intervention, and a whole range of everyday emotions (such as shyness)
have been classified as psychological ‘syndromes’ that are in need of expert
treatment (Guldberg, 2008).
A;; we shall see in subsequent chapters, parents are also increasingly
urged to take responsibility for ensuring their children’s educational success,
‘Good’ parenting is now seen to involve constant surveillance, in order to
ensure that your children are engaged in worthwhile, self-improving
learning activities; and, of course, many companies (from educational
publishers and sofrware companies to the providers of supplementary
classes and home tutoring) have seen this as a lucrative commercial
opportunity Many of these arguments are also frequently justified by what
might be called ‘infant determinism’ – the claim, apparently bolstered by
evidence from neuroscience, that children’s later development is heavily
dependent on the growth of the brain in the early years of life.
Toxic childhood syndrome
Here again, it is possible to track the activities of some prominent ‘moral
entrepreneurs’ involved in these debates, A;; we have seen, claims-makers
are bound to compete with each other in the public arena in seeking
to name and define their chosen social problem. Their aim is to achieve
‘ownership’ of the problem; although in doing so, they will often seek
support from a wide range of allies – sometimes allies who are otherwise
quite incompatible. And as we have seen, claims about children carry
a particular weight in what Best (1990) calls ‘the social problems
marketplace·.
In the UK, this has been particularly apparent in the recent debate about
‘toxic childhood’. A;;sertions about the ‘loss of childhood’ have a long
history: Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood (1983) is one notable
example, although much older instances can be found in the literature on
‘moral panics’, particularly in relation to media and popular culture
(Buckingham, 2000a; Springhall, 1998). However, Sue Palmer’s best-selling
book Toxic Childhood: Haw the Modem World is Damaging Our Children and
Exploited or empowered/
15
What We Can Do About It, published in 2006, has enjoyed remarkable success
in reviving the argument, and effectively defining a contemporary
‘syndrome’. The publication of the book was quickly followed by a letter
that appeared in the Daily Telegraph in September 2006: almost certainly
orchestrated by Pahner, the letter was signed by a wide range of
campaigners, academics, medical experts and children’s authors, and
received widespread publicity.’ The Telegraph immediately launched a
campaign to halt the ‘death of childhood’, and this in turn seems to have
prompted the Children’s Society to undertake its ‘Good Childhood
Enquiry’, a longer-term initiative which eventually resulted in the
publication of the book A Good Childhood: Searchingfor Values in a Competitive
Age (Layard and Dunn, 2009), subsequently followed by the Society’s
Manifesto for a Good Childhood.
There is an underlying religious dimension to this debate, which is
implicitly signalled by the use of terms like ‘values’. The Children’s Society
is in fact a Church of England organization, although it does not always
make this explicit; and the Patron of its Enquiry was Rowan Williams, the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Leader of the Church of England. Palmer’s
book was preceded by a number of high-profile interviews and articles in
which Williams challenged what he regards as the influence of secular
commercial forces in British society.4 In political terms, the argument is
somewhat harder to pin down: although the Daily Telegraph is certainly a
right-wing newspaper, the signatories of Palmer’s letter were politically
quite diverse. Indeed, the ensuing debate over ‘toxic childhood’ was
subsequently joined by publications in a similar vein from the Labour
campaign group Compass (The Commercutlisation of Childhood, 2006) and
the National Union of Teachers (Growing Up in a Material World, 2007).
While there are some differences between these texts, Pahner has been
particularly effective in establishing her ‘ownership’ of the problem (not
least by follow-up publications such as Detoxing Childhood: What Parents
Need to Know to Raise Happy, Successful Children, 2007). Her image of
contemporary childhood, and of the modern family, is unremittingly
bleak Children, she argues, are increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied with
their lives. We are apparently witnessing a mental health crisis among
young people, which is manifested in rising levels of binge drinking, eating
disorders, self-harm and suicide; in the increase in Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), dyslexia and autism spectrum disorders;
and more generally in increased levels of depression, anxiety and poor
self-esteem. Children’s relationships with others are more competitive and
superficial, resulting in a growing incidence of emotional difficulties,
16
The material child
bullying and violence; and their lifestyles are increasingly unhealthy.
Children today have a poorer attention span and less ability to tolerate
deferred gratification: ‘every year [they] become more distractable,
impulsive and self-obsessed – less able to learn, to enjoy life, to thrive
socially’ (Palmer, 2006: 14). There has been an erosion of respect for
authority, as society has drifted into moral relativism: children are
increasingly lacking in discipline, respect for others and good manners.
All these symptoms, she argues, are particularly manifested among
working-class children, who are ‘increasingly feral’ and live ‘chaotic,
dishevelled lives’.
Amid this catalogue of woe, Palmer identifies three fundamental causes.
Firstly, and most importantly, children’s increased access to media and
technology – and to consumer culture more broadly – is seen to have
damaging effects on their behaviour and attitudes in a whole range of
areas. These include: levels of fear and anxiety; sedentary lifestyles;
withdrawal and isolation; ‘pester power’, peer pressure and bullying;
distractedness, reduced attention spans and sleep deprivation; the lack of
family conversation and interaction; disrespectful behaviour and insolence
towards adults; and the undermining of imagination and creative play.
While Palmer condemns the internet as a forum for paedophiles,
pornographers, psychopaths and terrorists, she accuses the media more
broadly of promoting aggression, desensitization to suffering, sexualization,
gender stereotyping, obesity, eating disorders, bad language, ‘sleazy’
lifestyles, bullying and materialistic values. These assertions are imbued
with a familiar rhetoric about manipulation, addiction, passivity,
brainwashing, bombardment, ‘instant gratification’ and the whole
‘imagination-rotting, creativity-dumbing whirlwind’ of contemporary
popular culture (2006: 229).
The second cause is to do with changes in family life, and changing ideas
about parenting; and in this respect, Palmer’s account locks into wellestablished arguments about the ‘crisis’ of the modem family. The growing
involvement of women in the workplace, the rise in divorce and singleparent families, and pressures of work apparently mean that parents spend
less time with their children. On the one hand, parents no longer exercise
sufficient responsibility, for example in determining what children eat, how
they spend their time, when they get to bed, and so on. The ·conventional
disciplinary father figure’ has, according to Palmer, unfortunately
disappeared. Yet on the other hand, parents are also too protective, for
example in excessively supervising their children’s play, or in ‘hot-housing’
children by filling their time with improving activities. It is not clear
E:x:plaited or empowered?
17
whether the neglectful, the over-indulgent and the over-authoritarian styles
of parenting apply to different social groups, although there is an implicit
class dimension here. Palmer offers plentiful tips for parents on ‘detoxing’
childhood; but they are also portrayed as relatively powerless in the face
of the ‘onslaught’ of media and marketing.
Finally, government policy in a whole range of areas is also accused of
reinforcing ‘toxic childhood syndrome’: over-protective health and safety
legislation, the undue emphasis on testing in schools, lack of support for
family life, failure to provide adequate childcare, and so on. Schools are
hampered by bureaucracy, teachers are compelled to teach to the tests,
children are led into formal learning too early, and there is a damaging
culture of educational competitiveness both inside and outside schools. At
the same time, what Palmer calls ‘misinterpretations’ of human rights
legislation have further promoted the culture of moral relativism and
‘market-driven self-indulgence’.
Of these three elements, the first is ultimately the most significant:
weaknesses in the family, and failures of government policy are seen to
have created a kind of moral vacuum into which the damaging influences
of media and consumer culture can enter.
Modern life is rubbish?
The ‘toxic childhood’ position shares several characteristics with earlier
campaigns of this kind, although the target of its criticism is rather more
diffuse and all-encompassing. Indeed, it is hard to think of many things
that are wrong with the world that do not come under its remit. Ultimately,
it amounts to a comprehensive rejection of modernity – a stance that is
explicit in the subtitle of Palmer’s book. In this respect, it might be seen
to stand in a time-honoured British tradition, which can be traced back at
least to the Romantics. Modern technology, urbanization, consumer
capitalism, the pressure to compete, and the ‘speed’ of contemporary life
are the villains of the piece, while there is a strong sense of nostalgia for
a simpler, slower time, a rural idyll of family togetherness and spontaneous
play, in which ‘children could be children’.
Indeed, the comprehensive range of its critique may partly account for
its success: there is something for everyone to agree with here. As I have
noted, childhood serves as a particularly powerful unifying symbol in this
respect: dissenters can easily be stigmatized as uncaring and neglectful of
children’s needs, if not as outright enemies of childhood. The very simplicity
of the story also accounts for its ability to attract publicity and command
18
The material child
assent. It is a story that cannot be allowed to have a positive side: arguments
that might imply that children have more choices, opportunities, autonomy
and rights than they used to do cannot be permitted – or they can only
be acknowledged if these things are seen as fundamentally misguided
(as is the case in Palmer’s discussion of children’s rights). The causal
explanation that is proposed here also needs to be kept as simple as possible.
Palmer insists that the phenomena she describes are complex and have
several causes – although her account of the influence of the media and
consumer culture is resolutely one-dimensional, even if her view of changes
in family life is rather more ambivalent. There is a kind of grandiose
cultural pessimism here: the modern world is seen to have collapsed
into a spiral of inexorable moral and cultural decline. Essentially, we are
all going to hell, and it’s the media and consumer culture that are taking
us there.
Children are represented here as vulnerable victims, rather than in any
way resilient or competent. The banal possibility that most children (and
their parents) are reasonably well adjusted and doing fairly well- or simply
that society has become more fluid and diverse – is not one that can be
entertained. Palmer’s (fictional) portrait of a typical contemporary child,
with which her book begins and ends, is entirely negative: it is hard to
imagine how such a miserable, dysfunctional being could manage to
survive. There is also an implicit class bias in the arguments. Palmer
consistently assumes that the problems of modern childhood are more
prevalent among working-class children. It is working-class families that
are almost invariably represented as the most dysfunctional; and it is among
working-class children that the most challenging and socially unacceptable
forms of behaviour are apparent. Palmer claims to be drawing attention
to the problem of inequality, but her terrifying picture of the ‘feral’ children
of the working classes is suffused with class-based judgements to do with
taste and morality:
Of course, it is important to assess such assertions on the basis of the
evidence. Much of the evidence cited here amounts to hearsay and
anecdote. Scientific authorities are quoted, statistics from opinion polls are
proffered, yet there is no systematic critical presentation of data. There is
a persistent confusion in the argument between correlations and causes;
and incompatible or contradictory phenomena are attributed to the same
fundamental cause. The basis on which historical comparisons are being
made is frequently unclear. I will return to these issues in detail, and
present a range of contrary evidence, in later chapters. Yet questions of
logic and proof seem almost beside the point in this context. Like other
Exploited or empowered/
19
such ‘moral entrepreneurs’, Palmer speaks at a fundamentally emotional
level – and, at times, at an almost visceral one. She seeks to persuade, to
command assent, through the telling of a story about childhood – a story
that speaks to, and mobilizes, some of the most deep-seated hopes and
fears of parents in particular. The key issue, therefore, is not so much to
do with whether this story is accurate, but with the emotional responses
and the underlying assumptions that it invokes. Every construction of a
‘social problem’ involves a set of choices, a way of framing the topic, which
effectively precludes other ways of seeing or understanding it. The question
here is to do with what is gained – and more particularly, what is lost – in
this process.
Kid power?
The image of the child consumer and the story of modem childhood I
have been analysing here stand in stark contrast to the views of marketers
themselves. As such, this is hardly surprising, although (as we shall see) it
does result in certain paradoxes. I will be considering contemporary
marketing to children in more detail in chapter 5; but it is worth elaborating
briefly on this contrast here, as it illuminates some of the implicit
assumptions about childhood that are at stake in this debate.
As the children’s market has grown in size and influence, there has been
a proliferation of marketing discourse that seeks to explore and define
children’s characteristics and needs as consumers. While campaigners on
these issues often conceive of children as passive victims of commercial
manipulation, marketers are inclined to profess a very different view. They
tend to construct the child as a kind of authority figure: children (who are
almost always referred to here as ‘kids’) are seen as active, competent and
‘media savvy·, and hence as extremely difficult to reach and persuade. In
fact, this attempt to define and celebrate the power of the child consumer
also has a fairly long history, reaching back at least to the 1920s, when
retailers and advertisers began to orient themselves more directly towards
children, rather than their mothers. As Dan Cook (2000) observes, market
researchers have increasingly represented children as powerful, autonomous
consumers: their desire for commercial products is frequently seen as a
form of ‘self-expression· and a manifestation of their individuality.
One contemporary example of this approach may be found in the book
Brandchild (2003), written by the self-professed ‘brand fururist’ Martin
Lindstrom and his colleagues. Apparently based on research with 2,000
children worldwide conducted by the advertising agency Millward Brown,
20
The material child
Brandchild focuses primarily on ‘tweens’, which it defines as children aged
8-14. The book argues that there is now a growing need for marketers to
recognize and respond to the changing needs of this newly identified
‘niche’ market. According to Lindstrom, tweens are a digital generation,
‘born with a mouse in their hands’; and they speak a new language, called
Tweenspeak. They have anxieties – the stress of growing up, the fear of
global conflict, and so on; yet brands can help them to enjoy life despite
their difficulties. Indeed, tweens are seen to have a ‘spiritual hunger’, which
brands and marketers alone can satisfy.
The theoretical and methodological basis of this kind of market research
deserves critical scrutiny – and Lindstrom’s book has come in for some
scathing criticism within the market research industry (Fletcher, 2003).
However, the most striking aspect in terms of our focus here is the very
different construction of the child consumer. Far from being a passive
victim, the child here is sophisticated, demanding and hard-to-please.
Tweens, we are told, want to be in control, to be ‘listened to, heard,
respected and understood’: they must not be patronized. Tweens,
Lindstrom argues, are not easily manipulated: they are an elusive, fastmoving, even fickle market, sceptical about the claims of advertisers, and
discerning when it comes to getting value for money – and understanding
and capturing them requires considerable effort. As such, they are extremely
powerful and influential consumers: ‘they get what they want when they
want it’.
Of course, that is not to say that this market cannot be persuaded or
won: books like Brandchild are replete with suggestions for how to target
(and indeed manipulate) children. Like many of their critics, the marketers
often display a profound faith in the science of developmental psychology,
offering detailed analyses of children’s innate emotional ‘needs’ at different
ages and stages (see also de! Vecchio, 1997; Sutherland and Thompson,
2001). Significantly, the tactics that Lindstrom recommends to reach
tweens, such as viral and peer-to-peer marketing, rely on the active
participation of the peer group – and they are precisely those that
most alarm those who campaign against consumer culture. For the
marketers, however, these practices are all about empowerment – about
children registering their needs, finding their voices, building their selfesteem, defining their own values and developing independence and
autonomy.
The contrast between this argument and that of the critics of consumer
culture creates some interesting paradoxes. The campaigners who purport
to be speaking on behalf of children and defending their interests tend
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21
to present them as powerless; while the marketers, who might be seen
as attempting to manipulate them, present them as powerful. The
supposedly ‘radical’ critics of consumerism fall back on traditional
constructions of children as innocent and vulnerable, passively socialized
by external forces and lacking the skills or rationality adults are assumed
to possess; while the marketers emphasize – and indeed celebrate children’s autonomy, competence and independent agency. Of course,
marketers are bound to present children in this way, in order to deflect
accusations that they are merely exploiting them. Their claims about the
scepticism and sophistication of children – and indeed about the limited
influence of advertising – are routinely invoked in response to public
criticism. Yet such claims nonetheless bring them closer to recent thinking
in the Sociology of Childhood, and in the area of children’s rights, which
has tended to challenge conservative views of children’s innocence and
vulnerability, and argued for a view of the child as a competent social agent
(A. James et al., 1998).
In the highly polarized debate about children’s engagement with the
commercial world, this creates a paradox – and indeed a political dilemma.
There seems to be a stark choice here. Do we side with the critics, who
are undoubtedly identifying some significant problems in the way the
market operates, but who tend to rely on a traditional, conservative view
of childhood? Or do we side with the marketers, on the grounds that
they appear to believe in children’s power and autonomy – even as
they are accused of seeking to undermine it for their own ends? In the
public arena – and even, to some extent, in the academic debate – there
seems to be very little possibility of finding a middle ground between
these positions, or of moving beyond what seems to be a simple either/ or
choice.
Yet, despite their differences, these two positions also appear to construct
and define childhood in similar ways. While the campaigners assume that
there is a ‘natural’ state of childhood that has been destroyed or corrupted
by commercialism, the marketers suggest that children’s ‘real’ innate needs
are somehow being acknowledged and addressed, even for the first time.
It is believed that there is something particular to the condition of childhood
that makes children necessarily more vulnerable – or else spontaneously
more wise and sophisticated, for example in their dealings with technology;
and that adults are somehow exempted from these arguments. Both
approaches rest on assumptions about the natural or innate characteristics
of children, which are in fact socially and historically defined. Both appear
to place childhood in a space that is somehow outside or beyond the social
22
The material child
world – and hence the commercial world as well. By contrast, I would
argue that what Dan Cook (2000) calls ‘commercial epistemologies’ are an
unavoidable part of the construction and make-up of childhood itself.
Rather than the commercial world being an add-on, or an invasion of
childhood, it is an inevitable part of it; and we need to pay careful attention
to the ways in which those on all ‘sides’ of this debate construct and view
children.
Conclusion
The social constructionist approach I have adopted in this chapter has
undoubted limitations. In rejecting ·objectivism’ – the notion that social
problems simply exist out there in the world, waiting to be recognized – it
runs the risk of its opposite, relativism. It has been accused of providing
no basis for judging whether claims about social problems are true: all we
have is a mess of claims and counter-claims, with no means of adjudicating berween them (see Loseke, 2003). In practice, however, social constructionists appear to step back from this position: they remain interested
in establishing the real scale of the social problems they address, and
in identifying their empirical causes and consequences. The fact that problems are socially constructed does not mean that they do not exist; and the
ways in which they are constructed also have material implications for
people’s lives, in terms of their access to resources and how they relate to
each other.
The particular value of this approach, however, is in helping us to understand what might be gained and lost in constructing problems in particular
ways and not others. The metaphor of ‘framing’ is especially useful here.
Framing defines a problem, what is important about it and why it matters;
but, in the process, it also prevents other possible definitions and explanations, and obstructs the consideration of other potentially relevant issues.
The frame includes, but it also excludes. Social constructionists typically
differentiate here berween diagnostic frames – which specify the narure,
meaning and cause of the problem; motivational ones – which explain
why people should care about it; and prognostic ones – which identify what
needs to be done (Snow and Benford, 1988). In the case of children and
consumption, the construction (or the dominant critical framing) of the
problem has significant limitations. I will define these in broad and general
terms at this stage: specific illustrations and examples, which will undoubtedly complicate the story, will be addressed in subsequent chapters.
Exploited or empowered/
23
In terms of the diagnostic frame, the problem is fairly narrowly defined,
as a question of children’s exposure to advertising and marketing in
particular: other forms of commercial or economic activity to do with the
production and circulation of goods and services are much less likely to
receive attention. The relationship between children and advertising (or
marketing) is predominantly defined in terms of cause-and-effect – as a
matter of influence that flows only in one direction. In the process, children
are largely seen as passive victims, and as particularly vulnerable to
influence, by virtue of their (lack of) psychological development.
Furthermore, certain kinds of consumption – which are deemed excessive
or unnecessary, or which relate to products that are deemed to be harmful
or morally undesirable – are seen as problematic, while others are rarely
mentioned.
In terms of the motivational frame, the issue is defined much more
broadly. The problem of children’s relationship with advertising and
marketing is caught up in a much more all-encompassing story (a grand
narrative) of social, cultural and moral decline. This story is one with
clearly defined ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, in which innocent children are
preyed upon and ultimately violated by evil marketers. The telling of this
story inevitably connects with broader cultural themes, and invokes ‘feeling
rules’ that make it clear to us why we should care. It draws upon longstanding sentimental views of childhood, which present children as
threatened and endangered. It also invokes underlying assumptions about
cultural value, reflecting a profound distaste for the unrestrained and
vulgar consumption practices of those who are defined in various ways as
Others.
Finally, in terms of the prognostic frame, there is a peculiar imbalance.
Most critics call for a partial or complete ban on advertising and marketing
to children; but in practice – and in the likely absence of such a ban – they
tend to address their recommendations for action to parents. The problem
is effectively individualized, and the responsibility for addressing it is placed
on parents. Parents are strongly urged to pursue ‘good’ (that is, restrained,
wholesome and tasteful) consumption practices, and to eschew ‘bad’ ones,
both for tr.emselves and on behalf of their children. Good parents are
offered extensive instruction in ways of supervising and regulating their
children’s consumption, and thereby ensuring their healthy psychological
development.
One key aim of this book is to offer some way of reframing the ‘problem’
of the child consumer. Evaluating the kinds of claims that are made about
24
The milUrial child
the problem is inevitably part of this: evidence about the extent of various
aspects of the phenomenon, and their causes and its consequences, can
and should be carefully assessed. But beyond this, I shall be suggesting
some new ways of defining and understanding the issues at stake, which
go beyond the current terms of the debate. To begin, in the following two
chapters, this will involve exploring some of the theories and assumptions
that have been entailed in academic accounts of consumer culture, both
in general and then specifically in respect of children.
business
Online and Making Thousands, at Age 4: Meet the Kidfluencers
By Sapna Maheshwari
1,970 words
9 March 2019
International New York Times
INHT
English
© 2019 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
Samia was an influencer before she could talk.
Her parents, Adam and LaToya Ali, are influencers themselves and began chronicling Samia’s impending
arrival on YouTube and Instagram in 2014, once Ms. Ali learned she was pregnant.
“Samia’s birth video is on YouTube, so she’s pretty much been born into social media,” Mr. Ali said.
Samia is now 4 and has 143,000 followers on Instagram and 203,000 subscribers on YouTube. Her feeds are
mostly populated with posts of her posing and playing, but they also feature paid promotions for brands like
Crayola and HomeStyle Harvest chicken nuggets.
There are instances when “Samia can’t verbatim get the message out,” Mr. Ali, who lives in the Atlanta area,
said of the promotional posts. “Sometimes, their talking points are not kid talk, so LaToya would need to
appear, or myself, to relay those because those are key deliverables that the brands want.”
Welcome to the world of kidfluencers. Brands have flocked to influencers — individuals, famous or not, with
large followings on social media — for years, hoping their online popularity will prompt their fans to buy the
products they vouch for. Then child influencers started appearing on their parents’ profiles, a surreal but
seemingly harmless offshoot of this phenomenon.
Now, advertisers like Walmart, Staples and Mattel are bankrolling lucrative endorsements deals for toddlers
and tweens with large followings and their own verified profiles on YouTube and Instagram. As a result,
children too young to make their own accounts on the platforms are being turned into tastemakers.
Instagram, owned by Facebook, and YouTube, which is part of Google, are designed for adults in large part
because of a federal privacy law that protects children under 13. Bios for many of the younger influencers on
Instagram note that the pages are “run by parents,” and YouTube channels are presumably registered to their
guardians.
Because they say their platforms are 13-and-older zones, technology companies do not have to comply with
federal rules that limit targeted advertising and data collection. But Josh Golin, executive director of the
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said the companies had no incentive to keep children off the
sites.
And as TV ratings continue to fall and children spend more time online, advertisers are spending more money
to reach them there.
“The fact that brands are using actual children as influencers is a very clear sign that they’re targeting
children that they know are on these platforms,” Mr. Golin said.
That can mean big money for the families of kidfluencers. Kyler Fisher, the father of 2-year-old identical
twins who have more than two million followers on Instagram, said a sponsored post on the girls’ account
could fetch between $10,000 and $20,000.
The twins, Taytum and Oakley, have promoted car seats and Carnival Cruise Lines on Instagram. They are
also central to the success of their parents’ YouTube channel, Kyler & Mad, which has about three million
subscribers. Promotions on the family YouTube channel can draw $25,000 to $50,000.
Page 1 of 4 © 2021 Factiva, Inc. All rights reserved.
Fans are so interested in the family that their third child, due the first week of March, already has 112,000
Instagram followers.
“My kids complete the package, man,” Mr. Fisher said. “If we didn’t have the girls, I can’t imagine being as far
as we are.”
Another parent shared the prices commanded by the parent’s child on the condition of anonymity, citing
concern that the disclosures could harm negotiations with brands. The parent said brands might pay $10,000
to $15,000 for a promotional Instagram post while a sponsored YouTube video might earn $45,000. A 30- to
90-second shout-out in a longer video can cost advertisers between $15,000 and $25,000.
Brands are also pursuing children with smaller followings. The toy company Melissa & Doug emailed parents
about a six-week influencer campaign last summer, offering payments and free toys for weekly Instagram
posts of their children “having fun with the toys!” The company said it would pay $10 per 1,000 followers for
individual Instagram posts and $5 per 1,000 followers for Instagram Story posts.
The rise of this kind of advertising has raised questions involving fair compensation, oversight and work
permits, especially since child labor guidelines vary by state.
Andrea Faville, a YouTube spokeswoman, said that the site didn’t allow anyone under 13 to make or own
accounts and that it worked “closely with experts, nonprofit organizations and others in our industry to protect
families using our services.”
YouTube came under fire last month after lewd comments by pedophiles were discovered on innocent videos
of children; the company has since said it will suspend comments on most videos of minors. Some channels
that can “demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior” will keep comments but require moderators, the
company said. It remains to be seen if disabling comments will hurt the kind of connections kidfluencers try
to establish with their fans.
Sravanthi Dev, a spokeswoman for Instagram, said that while the platform prohibited users 12 and under,
their parents or representatives could create profiles for them “as long as it is clear in the bio information that
the account is run by the parent or representative.”
Michelle Foley’s 6-year-old daughter, Ava, and her best friend, Everleigh, also 6, have more than a million
followers on their shared Instagram and YouTube accounts. YouTube’s analytics say Ava and Everleigh’s
viewers are largely between the ages of 25 and 44, Ms. Foley said, but she said she thought the core
audience was between 8 and 18.
“When we go out, parents never know who we are, but kids do,” Ms. Foley said.
Alex Chavez-Munoz, a founder of Viral Talent, which works with child influencers, also disputed the data.
“When you see the analytics of a kidfluencer channel, the dominant audience is 25- to 34-year-old women,”
Mr. Chavez-Munoz said. “That’s obviously not the case. The case is that the child is watching it on their
parents’ device.”
In December, a 9-year-old kidfluencer known as Txunamy shared a photo on Instagram and asked her more
than two million followers to comment on it and share their ages. Thousands of replies flooded in: 9, 10, 11
years old.
Captiv8, which connects brands with influencers, found more than 3,100 Instagram influencers, from a
sample of 1.2 million accounts, who are likely under 13 based on terms in their bios like “managed by mom.”
(Instagram has more than a billion users.) Each account had at least 1,000 followers.
On YouTube, the much bigger kid influencer destination, there are toy accounts like Ryan ToysReview,
whose young star earned $22 million in a year, according to Forbes. But children, under their parents’ watch,
are also building followings on YouTube and Instagram as gamers, video bloggers, fashionistas, mischievous
toddlers and personalities who anchor family channels, which are often a cross between reality TV, pranks
and random skits. YouTube accounts can also bring in serious ad dollars without brand deals, which are
shared with the site.
Everleigh’s grandmother, whom Ms. Foley met when they worked together, came up with the idea of making
an Instagram account for the girls when they were 10 months old, calling them “besties” and dressing them in
matching outfits. The girls went “viral” eight months later after the account helped them land a modeling
campaign for the Kardashian Kids line, Ms. Foley said.
At that point, “we were like, ‘We should start a YouTube,’ but they couldn’t talk,” she said. “So then we kind of
waited for them to start talking.”
Page 2 of 4 © 2021 Factiva, Inc. All rights reserved.
The girls also have their own separate Instagram accounts. Everleigh’s sponsored posts have included
promotions for toys (“I’m excited to share that the new PAW Patrol Mighty Pups line is available exclusively at
Walmart!”) and Disney dolls (“Everleigh is in LOVE with her Fancy Nancy dolls!”).
The girls have made celebrities out of the rest of their families. Ava’s 1-year-old brother has 148,000
Instagram followers, and Everleigh’s newborn sister has a million. Recently, Everleigh started a YouTube
channel, Everleigh Opens Toys, and Ava is interested in making one, too, Ms. Foley said.
“If it wasn’t for Everleigh and Ava, I would not have what I have today,” she said.
Brands want to team up with children for the same reasons they want to work with older social media
personalities — their follower counts, the ability to post more quickly than traditional ad agencies, the way the
posts feel like recommendations from a friend. But advocates say these techniques can deceive children,
who are in the early stages of understanding and recognizing advertisements.
Children’s television, overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, has rules that separate ads
from content and limit product placement and promotions by a program’s host or characters. The internet
doesn’t.
YouTube has its own guidelines for children’s advertising, but they are often hard to police. For example, the
YouTube Kids app, designed for children 12 and under, is not supposed to contain sponsored content, but
The New York Times found several paid advertorial videos from influencers there for companies like Walmart,
Dreamworks and Claire’s. (YouTube removed the videos after The Times asked about them.)
“It is very manipulative of young children,” said Kathryn Montgomery, a professor emerita at American
University’s School of Communications. “With this form of promotion and advertising, there is a purposeful
blurring of those lines.”
Ava and Everleigh’s YouTube channel peppers sponsored videos among dance battles and hangouts with
other influencers. Ms. Foley said the family could get 10 email requests a day from brands.
The girls posted a 10-minute sponsored video for Mattel in November titled “First Sleepover Opening Giant
Presents!” An adult asked the children, clad in matching pajamas, about their holiday wish list, which was
“Barbie everything!” They appeared to sleep, then woke up, squealing, to wrapped Barbie merchandise.
Mattel declined to comment on its child influencer strategy.
In an advertorial video for Staples, Txunamy declared her excitement about back-to-school shopping at the
chain, then showcased her “haul.”
“Whenever we work with younger influencers, all contracts and negotiations are conducted through their
parents or talent agencies directly representing them,” said Meghan McCarrick, a spokeswoman for Staples.
Social media stars aren’t typically considered actors under the law. In California, a portion of child actors’
earnings are set aside in a trust based on the decades-old Coogan Law, named for a former child star whose
parents spent all his money by the time he turned 21. Similar trusts are required by New York, Louisiana and
New Mexico. For kidfluencers, it’s usually a voluntary decision by parents to create these accounts.
Several families said they had established the accounts after working on traditional TV shows or national
commercials.
As for the children, it can be tough for them to understand how much of a fuss they’re creating.
Samia’s father, Mr. Ali, said, “She doesn’t have a concept of viral or ‘views,’ so it’s almost like, for her, walking
into an experiment to learn something — it’s more of us giving her a task or assignment, where she has
something to conquer.”
He added, “We’ll know when she gets a sense of her following and let her know what this all means.”
PHOTO: Samia Ali, 4, getting help shooting a YouTube video, “How to Be a Good Kid,” in front of her
parents, LaToya and Adam, in their home near Atlanta. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Audra Melton for The New York
Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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27
MARKETING TO CHILDREN
THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA
Trends and Issues
Wonsun Shin
Introduction
Digital media have become an integral part of children’s lives. Marketers recognise the access that
digital media offer in terms of reaching young consumers, and they actively harness digital platforms to appeal to this market. While digital media offer unprecedented opportunities for marketers to target children, however, some of the current youth-directed digital marketing practices
have raised concerns. For instance, branded environments provided by online, social, and mobile
media often blend commercial and non-commercial content, making children susceptible to the
persuasive intentions of marketers. The interactive nature of digital media also increases the possibility that children will disclose personal information to unknown others, including marketers.
Overall, the new generation of consumers and media users faces unique challenges that previous
generations have not seen or experienced.
Defining ‘children’ as anyone under the age of 18, this chapter considers children as consumers in the changing media environment and examines how digital media pose new challenges
to this consumer segment. It begins with an overview of what is known about children as consumers and media users and the theoretical perspectives underpinning the knowledge. It then
explores how children are constructed as marketing targets in the digital age and addresses growing concerns associated with current marketing practices. The chapter concludes by identifying
gaps in the current understanding of marketing to children through digital media and highlighting
areas for future research.
Children as Consumers
Children constitute a lucrative market in several respects. First, although children may not be the
final decision-makers for household purchases, they substantially affect their caregivers’ buying
decisions. Three out of four parents in the US report that their children influence family purchase decisions (Viacom, 2018). According to a survey conducted with children aged 6–13 in
Australia, about 4 out of 10 children ‘help their parents decide’ clothes for themselves (38.1%),
DVDs (37.8%), toys (35.5%), and fast food (35.3%) (Roy Morgan, 2016). Another reason that
children are an important consumer segment is that they represent future consumers. Marketers
promoting adult products often reach out to children, with the hope that children will develop
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their brand preference at an earlier age and become lifetime consumers for their brands. Toyota’s
ToyToyota mobile app (‘Backseat Driver’) and McDonald’s Happy Meal are good examples of
such marketing practices, also known as cradle-to-grave marketing.
With an increase in dual-income households, smaller families, and more permissive parenting
practices among the younger generations of parents, today’s children learn to be active and competent consumers who are proactive about what they want and persistent in pursuit of their
needs, using various persuasion techniques – from begging and pestering to bargaining and negotiating with their parents (Hawkins, 2016). Children on average make approximately 3,000
requests to their parents for products or services per year (Schor, 2004). Their persuasion tactics,
often referred to as ‘pestering power’, are known to have substantial influence on the spending
decisions of parents at a global scale (Calvert, 2008).
However, children are also viewed as vulnerable victims of commercialisation who are easily
persuaded or ‘manipulated’ by marketers to pursue products that they do not need or which may
have detrimental effects on their physical and psychological wellbeing (Lapierre, Fleming-Milici,
Rozendaal, McAlister, & Castonguay, 2017). Extensive research has demonstrated positive links
between children’s exposure to fast food, alcohol, and tobacco ads and their favourable attitudes
toward the consumption of those products (Wilcox et al., 2004). Excessive commercialism
through marketing messages is also associated with materialism in young people, leading them to
ascribe greater importance to the acquisition and ownership of material goods (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003).
The answer to the question of ‘whether children are active agents or victims in the commercialised world’ is not straightforward, as children’s consumption-related attitudes, skills, and
behaviours are shaped by various developmental and social factors (Hawkins, 2016). Regarding
the role of cognitive development in children’s responses to marketing, a general consensus has
been that children’s age (maturity) matters. It is more difficult for younger children to understand
the commercial intentions behind marketing messages, as compared with older children, due to
their limited cognitive capability. For example, according to the American Psychological Association (Wilcox et al., 2004), children under the age of seven tend to have difficulty comprehending the true purpose of advertising. As they grow older, they become more critical about
marketing practices and no longer believe that advertising always represents the truth. This line
of thought has been influenced by age-based developmental-stage models, including Piaget’s four
stages of cognitive development (1970), Selman’s theory of perspective taking (1980), and RoedderJohn’s model of consumer socialisation (1999).
Aside from the level of cognitive development, the social environment in which children
grow up and learn social norms and proper conduct plays a crucial role in their responses to marketing practices (Roedder-John, 1999). The theory of consumer socialisation (Moschis, 1978) has
long been applied to examine and explain the process by which children acquire and develop
consumption-related knowledge, skills, and behaviours through their interactions with socialisation agents, which include parents, friends, schools, and media. According to the consumer
socialisation perspective, children’s interactions with socialisation agents result in an array of outcomes. For instance, the degree to which children and parents engage in critical discussions about
advertising practices can reduce children’s vulnerability to advertising (Buijzen, 2009). On the
other hand, children’s frequent interactions with peers and excessive use of media can make
them less critical about marketing practices (Moschis & Churchill, 1978).
Children as Media Users
These unique and influential young consumers are also avid media users; they spend considerable
time on diverse types of media. In addition, the amount of time spent on media tends to increase
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as children grow older. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies (2015), children
aged 4–5 spend 2.2 hours per day on screen media. This increases to 3.3 hours when children
reach the age of 12–13. Another important trend in children’s media use is that they rely heavily
on digital media, and this trend is steadily increasing. Eight out of ten teenagers aged 14–17 in
Australia think that the internet is extremely/very important to them (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2013). Ofcom’s survey with children in the UK (2017) found that
children aged 5–15 spent 15 hours and 18 minutes per week on the internet in 2017, which
represents a dramatic increase from 2007 (9 hours and 42 minutes). Pew Research Center (2018)
shows that 45% of teens in the US are online almost constantly, which is almost double the rate
from the 2014–2015 survey (24%).
Social media in particular represent important parts of young people’s digital media routine. In
Australia, almost all online teenagers aged 14–17 use social media, engaging in such activities as posting status updates, sending messages, tagging others, and joining groups (Australian Communications
and Media Authority, 2013). Children are also increasingly mobile. Teens’ access to smartphones
increased from 73% in 2014–2015 to 95% in 2018 in the US (Pew Internet Research, 2018). Across
eight different countries (Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Romania, and UK), 71%
of children aged 9–16 use their mobile phones to access the internet and 81% of these kids use social
networking services on mobile phones (GSMA, 2014).
Digital Marketing to Children: Issues and Concerns
Inspired by the mounting potential of digital media to reach this younger consumer group,
marketers have employed various strategies to appeal to digital youth. Well-known examples of
marketing strategies directed to young consumers include brand websites with interactive features, advertising displayed on those websites, brand placement embedded in digital content,
advergames (i.e., online or mobile games created by a marketer to promote a specific brand),
social media advertising, and branded mobile applications. Given that children spend excessive
amounts of time on social media and mobile devices, this chapter focusses on marketing practices utilising social and mobile media.
Social Media Advertising
A key characteristic of social media as a marketing communication platform is that they allow
marketers to ‘target’ specific consumer groups using the demographic characteristics, interests,
and online activities of the users. These pieces of user information enable marketers to offer personalised promotional content to different consumer segments. Users’ personal information is collected through their voluntary disclosure to social media (e.g., information they provide to join
a social networking site), as well as through their digital footprints (e.g., what users see and do
on their social media profiles and other websites). Social media retargeting (i.e., exposing a social
media user to an advertisement promoting a product or service that was shown on a previously
visited website) is thus a widely used marketing strategy to target both adult and teen social
media users (Zarouali, Ponnet, Walrave, & Poels, 2017). Let’s say that a teen Instagram user visits
an apparel brand’s website, browses, and clicks on a few items there. If the apparel brand is
a client or ‘partner’ of Instagram, the user’s behaviours on this apparel website will be known to
Instagram through a cookie. When the same user later visits Instagram, he or she will be ‘retargeted’ by advertisements promoting the products shown on the apparel website. In other words,
marketing messages are personalised based on consumers’ individual online behaviours.
From the marketers’ perspective, personalised marketing content is a logical choice, as it
results in more positive outcomes as compared with non-personalised content, including more
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Wonsun Shin
favourable attitudes toward the marketers and greater purchase intentions for the advertised
brands (Zarouali et al., 2017). Consumers are more likely to perceive personalised content to be
relevant and useful as compared with non-personalised content, as the former is in closer keeping
with their current lifestyle, context, and interests (Tucker, 2014). However, more precisely targeted personalisation requires a greater degree of personal information from social media users. In
other words, users may have to sacrifice their privacy in exchange for personalised offerings.
A problem is that young consumers often underestimate the risks associated with information disclosure and tend to share a wide range of personal information on social media (Madden et al.,
2013). The fact that they often have difficulty understanding how their information is collected
and used by social media platforms and other third-party marketers puts young social media users
at greater risk.
Another concern associated with social media marketing targeted at youth is that many of the
promotional messages, including personalised advertising, are blended into the users’ social media
profiles, blurring the line between commercial and non-commercial content. This is known as
social media newsfeed ads, referring to advertising messages that appear within users’ personal feeds.
Social media newsfeed advertising is a type of native advertising – paid advertising that matches the
look, feel, and function of its surrounding editorial content. According to eMarketer (2018),
native advertising like newsfeed advertising constitutes the main source of revenue for social
media companies.
Another type of native advertising popular among marketers targeting digital youth is influencer marketing (De Jans, 2018). Influencer marketing refers to a marketing practice in which
marketers work with social media influencers (i.e., individuals with access to a substantial
social network of people following them and the power to influence the followers’ opinions
and behaviours) to promote their brands (Folkvord, Bevelander, Rozendaal, & Hermans,
2019). It is considered native advertising because it allows marketers to blend their promotional messages into the content created by the influencer (van Dam & van Raimersdal,
2019). When social media influencers work for (or are ‘sponsored by’) marketers, they
endorse the marketers’ brands by featuring the brands as part of their social media stories
(Coates, Hardman, Halford, Christiansen, & Boyland, 2019). Because the brand stories are
seamlessly integrated into the influencers’ social media posts, young consumers are less likely
to view the stories as marketing messages (Coates et al., 2019). Furthermore, social media
influencers are often viewed as friends or friendly experts (Folkword et al., 2019). Given that
young consumers tend to be vulnerable to peer influence, brand messages endorsed by ‘peer’
influencers are more likely to be considered authentic and credible as compared with the
overt forms of advertising (De Jans, 2018).
Consumers are more likely to view, share, and click native advertising compared with more overt
forms of advertising like banner ads (Folkword et al., 2019; Marketing Land, 2016). However,
because native advertising, such as social media newsfeed ads and influencer marketing, obscures the
distinction between advertising and non-advertising content, it is also considered a misleading and
deceptive practice (Taylor, 2017). The organic form of native advertising on social media is less likely
to activate young consumers’ cognitive defences to cope with persuasion, possibly leading them to be
less critical about such marketing practices (Zarouali et al., 2017).
Lastly, most of the established social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
Twitter, etc.) require their users to be 13 or older to join, in order to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) (Office of eSafety Commissioner, 2016).
However, Ofcom’s (2017) survey indicates that about half of children aged 11–12 have social
media profiles. This means that many young children who are not supposed to use social media
can be exposed to age-inappropriate content, including marketing messages targeting older consumers, through their social media use.
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Marketing to Children through Digital Media
Mobile Marketing
Mobile devices offer a variety of tools for marketing, including SMS (short message service),
push notifications, mobile applications (apps), in-app advertising (ads that appear on mobile webpages or in apps), QR (quick response) codes, and location-based advertising. As an increasing
number of children and teenagers own mobile devices and rely heavily on those devices to
undertake a wide range of activities, marketers actively utilise mobile technology to reach young
consumers (Common Sense Media, 2014).
Advanced tracking technologies, as well as the prevalence of GPS- and wi-fi-enabled mobile
devices, have empowered marketers to identify and monitor the locations of their target consumers and to deliver customised advertising messages based on their current locations. Using
geo-location data from young consumers, marketers deliver location-specific promotions – for
example, sending ads or coupons when children are around particular stores or restaurants
(Common Sense Media, 2014). Marketers also encourage children to ‘check in’ at fast food restaurants and to share that information via social media (World Health Organization, 2016). These
tactics are about targeting children at the right time in the right context.
However, location-based marketing targeted at children raises two important concerns. First,
it targets children when they are most vulnerable to marketing messages (World Health Organization, 2016). This is likely to make children less analytical about promotional messages and
more likely to lower their guard. Given that location-based marketing is often used by fast food
brands to target kids (World Health Organization, 2016), its impact on children cannot be underestimated. Second, location-based marketing involves personal data, including the users’ current
location. In short, users’ privacy is at risk. Wang, Yang, and Zhang (2015) note that many
advertisers that utilise location-based advertising collect extensive personal information from
mobile users without providing clear explanations for how the data will be used.
The collection of personal data and the intrusions into consumer privacy that are commonplace among marketers are particularly pressing issues regarding mobile apps targeting children.
Apps often collect an array of personal information and seek ‘permission’ to access the user’s ID,
contact list, address book, calendar, network connections, camera, and storage associated with the
mobile device. For example, the Minecraft mobile app, a popular mobile game for children and
teenagers, requests access to users’ contacts, phone, storage, and full network connections to
other users (Google Play’s Minecraft page, n.d.). The Instagram mobile app, one of the most
popular social networking sites among teenagers, demands access to users’ camera, contacts, location, microphone, phone, SMS, storage, Bluetooth setting, and network connections on their
phones. Many other widely used apps have similar requirements and yet the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) survey of mobile apps targeted at children in 2012 showed that only 20% of
these apps provided a link to a privacy policy available to parents (FTC, 2015). This improved
three years later, with more than 45% of kids’ apps including links to their privacy policies on
their app store pages in 2015 (FTC, 2015). Nevertheless, according to the FTC (2015), those
apps do not provide easy enough access for parents or young users themselves to learn about
how user data are collected and used. That is, while mobile marketers collect extensive personal
information from young mobile users, they are not diligent in protecting the privacy of those
consumers.
Another concern related to mobile marketing targeted at children is that it often forces children
to view advertisements and nudges them to spend money on virtual goods. When children use freeto-play mobile apps to play games, for example, they are often required to watch or click in-app ads
to earn game money or skip to the next level. They are also prodded to make in-app purchases for
a variety of reasons – to access extra functions, unlock the game’s full features, get new accessories
or abilities for their game characters, buy rare items, speed up the game’s progress, or enjoy the
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Wonsun Shin
game without advertisements. These kinds of marketing practices may induce materialistic attitudes
in children, leading them to associate money with solutions (Opree, Buijzen, & van Reijmersdal,
2013). While in-app purchases represent the primary revenue source for mobile marketers (Business
of Apps, 2018), they can also result in parent–child conflict. Numerous news reports have covered
accidental and expensive unauthorised purchases made by children across the world, like a sevenyear-old child who spent £4,000 on a Jurassic World in-app purchase (Daily Mail, 2015).
What Is Known: a Summary of the Current Knowledge
Overall, the literature shows that children are many-sided consumers. They are influential consumers
with great indirect buying power. They are also active agents, persistent about what they want and
strategic about the manner in which they fulfil their consumption needs. Children are also ardent
media users, and digital media constitute a substantial part of their lives. In response to these characteristics, marketers aggressively target young consumers using numerous digital marketing tools.
However, the literature also suggests that children, especially younger ones, are susceptible to marketing influences due to their limited developmental capacity and consumption experience. Current
digital marketing practices appear to put children in a more vulnerable position, as outlined below.
•
•
•
•
Privacy intrusion: Just as adult consumers are targeted through data-driven marketing, young
consumers are also targeted through online tracking, location-based and behavioural targeting, and retargeting strategies. Zarouali et al. (2017) show that retargeted Facebook ads lead
to greater purchase intention among adolescents compared with non-retargeted Facebook
ads. That is, content personalisation through online tracking ‘works’ to attract young consumers. However, children often input various types of personal information when they join
social networking sites or download and use mobile apps without understanding how their
personal information is collected and used by marketers. This raises important concerns
regarding privacy.
Covert advertising: Young consumers who spend extensive amounts of time on social media
are exposed to various forms of covert advertising such as social media newsfeed advertising
and influential marketing (Lapierre et al., 2017). These forms of advertising integrate commercial messages into non-commercial content and obscure the line between advertising and
neutral messages. Research suggests that covert advertising can be effective when it is considered nonintrusive by viewers (Lee, Kim, & Ham, 2016). However, the subtle nature of
covert advertising makes it difficult for young consumers to understand that they are being
targeted by marketers (Lapierre et al., 2017). It can also lower consumers’ persuasion knowledge, making them less critical about marketing practices (Taylor, 2017).
Ad-induced materialism: When engaging with digital media such as app-based mobile games,
children are exposed to ongoing pressure to spend money to enjoy better digital experiences
(Kelion, 2013). This can foster a materialistic orientation in children and cause parent–child
conflicts. Unauthorised spending on in-app purchases can also result in a significant financial
loss for children and …