Born to Buy
By Juliet B. Schor
Scribner, $25.00 US, $36.00 Can. 275 pages
In the 1950’s, ads aimed at kids followed predictable patterns: those for boys were recorded at high decibels and contained car crashes or animation while ads for girls were full of pink colors, and were bouncy and sweet. Still, five decades ago, advertising for kids was considered a marketing backwater, with a limited return on investment. Today, marketing to kids is a mega-bucks industry. All too often, these commercial messages go beyond good taste, and are delivered by marketers who use unethical and even deceitful tactics to get kids’ attention. In fact, the ways kids are targeted today makes the 1950’s ABC TV show “The Mickey Mouse Club” look…well, mickey mouse.
According to Juliet Schor, all of us need a wake up call about what marketers are doing to our kids. Schor, a recognized expert on consumerism and family studies, and a professor at Boston College, says we need to start asking how much marketing to kids is enough, and what we can do to protect our children. Her latest book, Born to Buy, is an eye-opening account of the extent to which marketers will go to reach kids, and the damage to our kids caused by excessive exposure to ads.
Part of the problem, says Schor, comes from the power and political influence wielded by a small number of mega-corporations that sell most of what kids buy. These corporations have learned that children have become the conduits from the marketplace to the household, and they exploit that connection to wring out maximum profits. Schor says there can be no question the kids are susceptible to the advertisements because every half-second, another Barbie doll is sold, while one fifth of all McDonald’s meals sold are Happy Meals.
This childhood consumerism is leaving an unpleasant legacy for society, says Schor. Youth obesity is a problem now reaching 25% of the population, and since 1980, obesity rates for children have doubled. Psychological disorders are now found in as many as 13% of youngsters between 9 and 17 years of age, and a lot of it can be traced to an upsurge in materialistic values among kids.
Born to Buy is not just a bunch of finger pointing, however. Schor balances her thoroughly detailed work with some thoughtful suggestions that would serve our youngsters well. First, she calls for Ad-Free Schools, because, “advertising in schools violates a fundamental principle of consumer sovereignty: the ability to escape ads and marketing…The problem is compounded by the fact that school advertising frequently involves candy, snacks, soft drinks, violent movies and other products that undermine children’s health and well being and contradict school’s basic mission,” she says.
Secondly, she calls for some federal legislation with real teeth, to counteract the aggressive intrusions by these marketers into kids’ lives. Yet another of her suggestions would have advertising to children taxed heavily, thereby reducing the number of ads for kids, while the collected taxes could generate a fund to promote non-commercial programming for kids.
Writers such as Henry Giroux, Neil Postman, Jean Kilbourne and Ralph Nader have preceded Schor, all expressing concern for what our society is doing to kids. What Juliet Schor does differently, more completely than those who have come before her, is to explain the push-pull relationship between marketers and kids. Schor also convincingly gets the reader to ask, “What will it take to shift the balance of power?” Today’s kids may not be watching Mickey Mouse, but Schor makes it is clear they are sure getting some goofy messages.
Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.
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