Interactive media& child development

Berkeley Media Studies Group

NPLAN/BMSG Meeting Memo

Child Development

Research on Child Development:
Implications for How Children Understand and Cope with Digital Marketing

Louis J. Moses
University of Oregon

Memo prepared for
The Second NPLAN/BMSG Meeting on Digital Media and Marketing to Children

for the NPLAN Marketing to Children Learning Community

Berkeley, CA June 29 & 30, 2009
Sponsored by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

1

Moses, page 1

Children today are confronted by a bewildering array of marketing practices. These practices are constantly evolving, increasingly complex, and often subtle in their implementation. Nowhere is the range of marketing phenomena more apparent than in the digital marketplace where children are exposed to marketing through a variety of media including interactive video games, social networking sites, mobile phones, and instant messaging.1 Research on children’s ability to understand and cope with marketplace advertising has a long history but that research has focused almost exclusively on children’s processing of traditional television advertising.2,3,4 The goal of this paper is to begin to lay out what theory and research on children’s development might suggest regarding their ability to negotiate the world of digital marketing.
Coming to appreciate the nature of marketing, and learning how to cope effectively with it, are not simple skills that instantaneously emerge at some well defined point in children’s development. Rather, a whole set of specific competencies needs to be acquired and slowly consolidated. Moreover, these competencies follow their own developmental timetables, timetables that likely differ in non-trivial ways across children and across cultural contexts.

Identifying Marketing and Recognizing its Purposes
To comprehend any form of marketing, children need an ability to distinguish it from other forms of media content. Simple recognition reveals little

References: Chester, J. & Montgomery, K. (2007). Interactive food and beverage marketing: Targeting children and youth in the digital age Boush, D.M., Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (2009). Deception in the Marketplace: The Psychology of Deceptive Persuasion and Consumer Self Protection Gunter, B., Oates, C., & Blades, M. (2005). Advertising to Children on TV: Content, Impact, and Regulation Kunkel, D., Wilcox, B.L., Cantor, J., Palmer, E., Linn, S. & Dowrick, P. (2004). Report of the APA task force on advertising and children Harris, P. L. (2006). Social Cognition. In D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of Child Development Vol Malle, B.F. & Hodges, S.D. (Eds.) (2006), Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide between Self and Other Wellman, H.M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief Perner, J. (1991), Understanding the Representational Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wellman, H.M. (1990), The Child 's Theory of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perner, J. & Wimmer, H. (1985). "John thinks that Mary thinks that...": attribution of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year old children Chandler, M.J. & Sokol, B.W. (1999). Representation once removed: children 's developing conceptions of representational life Moses, L.J. & Baldwin D.A. (2005). What can the study of cognitive development reveal about children’s ability to appreciate and cope with advertising? Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 24, Zelazo, P.D. & Müller, U. (2002). Executive functions in typical and atypical development. In U. Diamond, A. (2002). Normal development of prefrontal cortex from birth to young adulthood: cognitive functions, anatomy, and biochemistry Garon, N., Bryson, S.E., & Smith, I.M. (2008). Executive function in preschoolers: a review using an integrative framework Lee, M., Choi, Y., Quilliam, E., & Cole. (2009). Playing with food: Content analysis of food advergames. Mallinckrodt, V. & Mizerski, D. (2007). The effects of playing an advergame on young children’s perceptions, preferences, and requests