Children in our society have for some time been a target of exploitative
marketing; it’s a business worth billions of dollars per year. Most corporations
do not even attempt to hide the fact that they target young children, who lack
discernment and can’t always tell the difference between information or
entertainment and the advertisements wrapped around it.
In such a culture of commerce, the underlying equation is “having more =
happiness”. But, evidence points to exactly the opposite. “(P)ressure to
overspend and overconsume actually makes people less happy” and when such
pressure affects children, the results are even scarier.
Psychologist Tim Kasser “found that materialistic children are less happy, have lower self-esteem and report more symptoms of anxiety and less generosity.”
Sociologist Juliet Schor adds more regarding children: “High consumer involvement is a significant cause of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and psychosomatic complaints.”
Professor Schor adds that children experiencing emotional
problems can be helped by simply disconnecting from this Matrix-like world of
commerce being created for them.
Many professional organizations such as the WHO (World Health Organization) and
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood either support restrictions on
marketing to children, work to counter this prevalent trend or both.
With children exposed to marketing in school, on school
buses, on public transit, in grocery stores, on television, in videos and
movies, and online, among other places, we need to ask ourselves many questions.
Among them, what is the real value of the products that line the shelves? Are,
for instance, “educational videos” and computer software for babies and pre-schoolers
necessary?
If our children lack anything, it is not an exposure to technology or commerce?
We can rest assured that our children will encounter these. Let us remove our
children from the world or the artificial and into that of the real and the
living.
Let us explore the richness of that which we call nature.
Let us get away from the neat and tidy and give permission to our children to
get messy in the exploration of 3-dimensional life.
