media literacy
Advertising to Children By Elizabeth Kosuth
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any parents are already aware that excessive television viewing has been linked with childhood obesity. As watching television is a sedentary activity, it’s an obvious conclusion, but there are other factors at play. Children’s programming is awash with advertisements touting the pleasures of consuming food high in fat, sugar and salt. These ads are carefully constructed for maximum
effect, stimulating and inflating desire in children that nearly any parent with a child in tow at the grocery store can tell you is ruthless. Studies indicate eating foods that are high in fat and sugar create a synergistic effect that stimulates and sometimes even extends higher levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that carries messages among nerve cells. Dopamine focuses our attention, which is why it can be hard to eat just a few cookies or one small piece of cake. Eating foods high in sugar, fat and salt actually changes how we respond to food—mere desire can become cravings and “addictions,” especially when constantly reinforced by repetitive advertising. Peddling junk food to children has proven to be a lucrative business: in the ten years between 1994 and 2004, development of new food products targeting children jumped from 50 to 470. Page 24 — Healthy Cells Magazine — Bloomington — Jan/Feb 2012
A century ago, the purpose of advertising was to sell a product on the merits of its usefulness. Now products are sold through careful construction of appearing to meet an emotional or human need. The images used in ads for food commonly pair emotionally satisfying activities—like having fun or impressing friends—with the sensual pleasure of eating the product. Thus, drinking Mountain Dew is associated with being “cool”—a term that really comes down to being accepted and admired by one’s peers, an emotional need especially strong for tweens and teens. A fast food advertisement may use music and cuddly images to create a connection between warm, fuzzy feelings and their particular children’s food combo, even though those feelings are more likely to be generated by experiencing closeness with the people we love. The power of this manipulation can be weakened if parents talk with their children about the nature of dramatization. Young children especially need to be told that, while it can be entertaining, an ad’s only purpose is to sell products. Point out that the images in an ad are purposefully designed to create certain feelings and desires, and use a child’s personal experience with the performance or pleasure of using a particular toy, in comparison with the ad promoting that toy, to demonstrate your point. For example, note that even if the Skittles commercial shows children experiencing a fantastic barrage of sensual pleasure as they eat this product, the real experience of eating Skittles does not come anywhere near the televised version of it. While this seems obvious to adults, children are less likely to separate the fantasy from reality. Parents can talk to children about the feelings that particular advertisements evoke, and then ask the child to think and talk about what actually creates these feelings for them. Does drinking a Mountain Dew make your friends admire you more than being a loyal and honest friend? Does eating a hamburger and collecting the trinket feel as good as a hug from a parent or sharing a favorite activity with a friend? These questions need to be asked and repeated from an early age, before children have become so habituated to accepting the subliminal reality portrayed by commercials that their answers to these questions become an alarming “yes.” Finally, it doesn’t help when families combine mealtimes with watching television. Not only does the distraction prevent people from realizing when they’ve eaten enough, it sacrifices a prime opportunity for family bonding. With today’s busy lifestyles, opportunities for parents to connect with their children are at a premium. The foods we eat and the products we use have become a form of social identity, pulling children away from identifying with their family’s values to instead adopt the superficial values of consumption and image. We need to provide the emotional bonding necessary for a child to be securely familiar with the warmth of family intimacy, so that eating a fast food meal is nothing in comparison. Elizabeth Kosuth holds a Master’s degree in Communication from Illinois State University, and researches and writes about parenting and media literacy. She strives to empower parents to help their children become critical, conscious consumers.