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