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I started writing about the predominance of dead parents in movies (understandably I take exception to this) and in the course of my research I stumbled upon this ad:

Suddenly, being dead seemed to be the least of my worries.  This ad sells video games.  Here is another ad that makes games attractive to kids by demonstrating how horrified mothers are when viewing game clips:

As a sponge cake lover and a mother I admit to feeling a range of emotions, but then I realized that these ads are an outgrowth of commercial indoctrination that has been going on for years. 

Our commercials have morphed into ads for anti-authoritarianism, if not a beginner’s guide to criminality.  In a single morning of cartoons your children might see rabbits and leprechauns neatly tricked out of their own food, candy ads promising that their product will buy you enough time to come up with a viable lie, teens happily bursting out of a factory with stolen goods under the protest of security guards and a prison uniform clad burglar who is addicted to thieving fast food hamburgers. Lots of writing has been done lamenting the effects of this advertising on our children’s health habits, but little has been written about the underlying morality message and its effect on our changing social norms.

Photo: Ideaspasm.com

We parents survived (with various scars) the creepiness of the Burger King guy showing up uninvited in our bedrooms, giant pitchers of Kool-Aid smashing through our walls and freaky decapitated doll heads. What makes today’s ads different? Sheer numbers. In the1960s, kid’s programming consisted of 27 hours a week, mostly concentrated on Saturday mornings. By 2009 Common Sense reports that  90% of our kids are “frequently” parked in front of the television selecting programming from 14 children’s networks that are on 24 hours per day. Average screen time for adolescents age 8-18 has grown to 7.5 hours per day...11 hours per day if you count the multiple screens they are viewing simultaneously. And according to Pediatrics (December 2006) young kids are unable to distinguish between truth and the hyperbole of advertising. Dale Kunkel, PhD, at the University of California, Santa Barbara cautions "To young children, advertising is just as credible as Dan Rather reading the evening news is to an adult." The more kids watch the more firmly they believe.

The remote too?  Now you've gone too far.
Photo:Telegraph.co.uk

Kids are just starting everything earlier these days.
Photo: Unliberaledwoman.com

Repetition is a primary tool in brainwash.  Neuroscientist Kathleen Taylor explains that repetition is an integral part of brainwashing techniques because “connections between neurons become stronger when exposed to incoming signals with higher frequency and intensity.” Advertisers have known this for a long time, seeding media buys in viewing blocks—hoping to achieve the 9 exposures necessary to grow new consumers.

Yup, looks like nine.
Photo: david.dicke.com

Once ideas take root in young individuals they are likely thrive. Taylor argues that people in their teenage years and early twenties are more susceptible to persuasion. Her research demonstrated that individuals who have undergone indoctrination have more “rigid pathways” in the parts of their brain dedicated to reasoning, and that means brainwashed individuals will be “less likely to rethink situations or be able to later reorganize these pathways.” The bottom line here is that your child may be permanently if subtly shaped by observing a commercial that encourages lying as a problem-solving technique or stealing as a form of fun. Or worse.

Photo: Loves.cosmetics.com

Even if your child escapes pathological lying as a coping technique there are other effects of massive amounts of screen time and unsupervised viewing. For example, RAND research confirms that teens are twice as likely to have sex if they see it portrayed on television, and children as early as 4 years old actually aspire to be bullies after seeing it modeled on television. Oh, but there’s more! Frequent TV viewers have smaller vocabularies, have a higher chance of obesity and are more materialistic (Palo Alto Medical Foundation) Finally, these shows effect parents.  More and more, parents are lowering their expectations of kids, accepting the portrayal of sneaky, rebellious, drug addled idiots as a norm (Stern, 2005.)

“Television viewing is a highly complex, cognitive activity, during which children are actively involved in learning” (Anderson & Collins, 1988) What they are learning can only be mitigated by educating them, early, about the nature of television, making them more savvy about the goals of advertisers.  Above all don’t accept the role that advertisers have assigned us as parents.  We don’t have to be dead, or dunderheads, or evil or accept abuse in their quest for profit. 

                                                     

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