Preview

The Positive Effects Of Child Commercialization

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1382 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Positive Effects Of Child Commercialization
INTRODUCTION

One of our foundational insights in sociology is that our lived realities are constructed socially. We become human through a social process, and our understanding of the world is forever formed by these social experiences (Tepperman, Albanese & Curtis, 2014, p.114). In this paper, I argue that while consumerism predicts and ensures the growth of an economy, the commercialization of products marketed to children should enhance its regulations to better remedy our nations. In the first part of this paper I will explain how the output of marketing that is used on children is creating a conformed, consumer based generation, and to follow, I will explain how diverging from social expectations it is affecting children’s mental
…show more content…
The effects of child based commercialization does not become as prevalent until the child reaches school. In my time, a child would be able to escape the need to drastically conform until around the sixth grade; after that you are expected to wear certain clothing brands, have certain accessories, and look a certain way. In today’s children, you will find second graders wearing the Guess brand shirts and jeans, accompanied by Ugg boots, with the latest advertised toy hanging out of their neon backpacks. Those who choose to wear something different consciously feel the need to conform to the society that is their school in order to avoid bullying. Regardless of home environments, children are inevitably victims to commercialization for a mandatory twelve years of their lives, which ironically is theorized by Erik Erickson to coincide with the development stage of Industry vs. …show more content…
Teens who change their style to something frowned upon are presumed deviant by strangers, peers, and parents. The commercialized attack on children’s individualism is impacting the structural integrity of what we expect from our economy in twenty years. Children are silently suffering with the goal of trying to be like everybody else because there is not enough advertising encouraging them to stay true to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In his report, “Kid Kustomers,” Eric Schlosser discovers the tactics marketers and manufacturers utilize to target children. Schlosser claims that since the 1980s when working parents spent less and less time with their kids, they felt it necessity to spend more money on them. Manufacturers took advantage and began to promote a kid-related appearance. They started by observing children of specific ages to discover their interests and habits, receiving much of their information from the Internet and kids’ clubs. This provided the marketers insights on how to improve their business plan to attract more children and create “cradle-to-grave” customers. Their strategies often resulted in clever mascots…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Central Idea: Marketers love teens because they easily spend money on “luxury” items such as clothing, electronics, and music. They mostly make their purchase decisions independently, have significant influence on family purchases, and companies know that once they have “branded” a child, they are likely to be customers for life. They reach kids by advertising in magazines, movies, TV shows, and on the internet. Companies get info about kids spending habits from internet “quizzes” and “surveys”. Marketers know how to capitalize on important teen issues and anxieties, like body image, peer acceptance, coolness, and need for power.…

    • 1683 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    In ‘‘Youth in a Suspect Society,’’ Giroux mentions how within America, children are being overwhelmed by commercials, while having commercials thrown at them on a daily base, youths are contributing to advertisements effort in persuading them to buy because youths spend more time with these technologies that delivers them nonstop ads (46). Also in ‘‘Transitions of Youth Citizen in Europe: Culture, Subculture and Identity,’’ by Andy Furlong, who works at the University of Glasgow as a Professor of Sociology in the School of Business and Management and Irena Guidikova, whose the Head of the Division at the Council of Europe, where this book was published. They mentioned in addition to Giroux comment, how all media are providing young people with an ongoing source of new material for creating media symbols (85). The term ‘‘media symbols’’ could be interpreted as the desires advertisements feeds their consumers, known as the social acceptance in a youth’s identity. It’s an go-to tactic because the media outlet is mostly preferred by young people, having a secure and stable position in an adolescent’s life, advertisements end up offering a ‘‘special kind of knowledge’’ (Furlong and Guidikova 85). This ‘‘special kind of knowledge’’ is associated with the nonstop ad providing direct and indirect messages to youth. It surprising to realize the…

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    M&a Law

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Children are increasingly the prime targets for marketers because they have a significant influence over family purchases (Marwick, 2010).…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the today’s world of consumerism, children have become a major asset to consumers and producers now have a greater impact on the health and attitudes of their juvenile customers. Professor of Sociology, Juliet B. Schor, and undergraduate sociology major, Margaret Ford, in their article, “From Tastes Great to Cool: Children’s Food Marketing and the Rise of the Symbolic,” analyze food marketing strategies on the lives of youth. After conducting research and studying, Schor and Ford concluded that the food industry’s advertising is a major cause of unhealthy lifestyles of children. Schor and Ford’s purpose is to educate readers about the harmful impact of food advertising on young consumers. As the title suggests, food marketing impacts…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    (Wexler, 68) Even the companies themselves admit it, “We want people buy our product [.]” (Rotter). Children are main targets for fast food companies. On average, 11,000 new products aimed at kids are introduced each year. (“Capitalism & Obesity…”). “…it is [unfair] to allow companies with slick, aggressive, sophisticated advertising campaigns to… directly influences children’s food choices” (Jacobson) Although many forces are trying to positively advertise to children; negative advertisements just overpower these too much. “The [over two billion] marketing budget of a company like Coca- Cola dwarfs even the $500 million [spread out] over five years being spent on childhood obesity by the [forces against obesity].” (Walsh). Marketing aimed at children, including marketing of food products, increased from $6.9 billion in 1992 to fifteen billion in 2002. (Wexler, 71) This rise in…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Buying all that expensive jewelry and that glamorous, new shoes, is a way for you into buying popularity. At least that's what most children think. Advertisers create simple commercials that are able to make children feel stupendous, when they buy the new “coolest’ product, today. Why do we feel this way, you ask? The company's advertisements are convincing children into purchasing the product, until their wallets are empty. Advertisements contain effective techniques that are targeted to children, but they could be seeing problems in their physical and psychical health in the future.…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Care and Belonging

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Allison J. Pugh took the words right out of my mouth when writing her article on parents spending too much money on material items for their children. Commodity consumption for children has exploded to $670 billion spent annually on or by children in the United states in 2004 and there is a good chance its only getting higher. She branches off in the article going into several different topics on how the adults and children are effected by their desire to want to belong in society and how it affects the relationship between the parents and the children. It also focuses on the corporate marketers and how they tend to sell a fantasy to the children, reeling them into having a desire to have the product. This being done by the marketers, it also allows the parents to have the desire for their children, resulting in buying the product.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Consuming Kids (Summary)

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This survey was born out of concern that there are few statistics on the effects of marketing industry 's impact on our youth. Just as the article on "Consuming Kids" raises awareness about children being lured into believing they can 't live without things and the problems rising out of it. This survey makes us aware of how this market is willing to sacrifice the sanctity of family life by undermining the parents via their television while children watch mega hours of uninterrupted commercials aimed at them. These surveys were compared with a couple of sparsely completed other ones. The respondents felt that problems such as: aggressiveness, materialism, obesity, lack of creativity, overly sexualized behavior and self-esteem, were detrimentally influenced by the youth marketing industry.…

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rather, we are witnessing the rise of an increasingly homogenized popular culture underwritten by a ‘Western’ culture industry based in New York, Los angeles, London and Milan. (Steger, 75) According to Steger, the Americanization of the world has overwhelmed more vulnerable cultures with Western norms and lifestyles. Another ideological tension of globalization is the concept of “ethos of infantilization,” a system that dumbs down adults to think more like children through dumbed down advertising and consumer goods while also targeting children as consumers. (Steger, 77) To increase profits and expand their businesses, global capitalists develop homogenous products that target the widest market possible, making global consumerism increasingly soulless and unethical in its pursuit for profit. Also, those in favor of the consumerist spread of capitalism must consider the consequences of such ideology, such as the decline of traditional communal sentiments as well as the commodification of society and nature. (Steger,…

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Research Graphic Organizer

    • 1416 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In this article, they discuss how advertising sort of tricks children into thinking they’re not “popular” unless they have all the topnotch products. They also talk about ethics in advertising.…

    • 1416 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Consumerism in Children

    • 1437 Words
    • 6 Pages

    When I was two years old my mother enrolled me in gymnastics. Gymnastics was a huge part of my life for the next four years. After moving up to be with the fourteen and fifteen year olds my mother realized that something was not right, because I was having body issues at the age of six. In the text “How Do Our Children Get So Caught Up In Consumerism” by Brian Swimme he addresses the issue of how deeply affected the children of America are due to consumerism. Unlike Swimme I do not believe that all of children’s psyche problems come from ads or television. I think they also come from people who our children highly trust. Although Swimme is right about consumerism affecting many children, I will argue that it is not only the media and ads affecting our children but also people that our children trust, because my psyche was deeply affected by one of my gymnastic coaches as a child.…

    • 1437 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Children are targeted through the media via various sources of advertising such as celebrity endorsement, television advertising, marketing on the internet, product placement, sponsorship of sporting teams and branding on toys or clothing [11]. Companies promoting unhealthy food have made their products desirable to kids through toys and the use of bright colours. A number of studies have disturbingly shown that two to six year olds can recognise familiar brand names, packaging, logos and characters and associate them with products [12]. Many children fall into the media’s trap, eating unhealthy food without thinking or knowing about the…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    One consequence of marketing to children is that kids nowadays are saying things like ''I want to be rich when I grow up!''. Back then, when they were not exposed to as many ads as kids today are kids used to say things that had a meaning to them. One example of this is that if you walk into a classroom full of children that are at least 5 or 6 and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, then the children will probably respond with something like ''I want to be famous and rich!'' But, if you were to do the same thing but back in the 1980s, then the kids would say something like "I want to be a…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    naïve and gullible, they do not think about how bad or what side effect can caused…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays