Juliet Schor, Born to Buy Children have become the conduits from the consumer marketplace into the household, the link between advertisers and the family purse… They are the household members with the most passionate consumer desires, and are most closely tethered to products, brands, and the latest trends. (Schor, 11)

Children’s social worlds are increasingly constructed around consuming, as brands and products have come to determine who is “in” or “out,” who is hot or not, who deserves to have friends, or social status. (11)

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Ariana Grande Covers Teen Vogue

More children go shopping each week (52 percent) than read (42 percent), go to church (26 percent), participate in youth groups (25 percent), play outdoors (17 percent), or spend time in household conversation (32 percent). (31)

Why are children so prized in the ad wars? spend their own money influence broader family spending decisions receptive to advertising campaigns designed to make them future consumers  Miriam H. Zoll, “The Progress Report: Youngster Taught To Be Materialistic,” http://www.progress.org/ethics01.htm. Companies know that is where their profits are, according to James U. McNeal, professor of marketing at Texas A & M University. McNeal says children represent three different strategies for making money. For one thing, children have money of their own to spend. But they also influence family spending decisions, and they are open to advertising campaigns designed to make them future consumers.

According to [Gary] Ruskin, the all-out assault on children’s senses and values has escalated dramatically in the last decade. The amount of money spent on marketing to children, he says, is close to 10 times greater than in 1990. "It’s not slowing down," he said. "Children are the largest and fastest-growing market for consumption. Car companies know that children influence their parents’ choices of automobiles, so they pitch their ads to be attractive to kids. The influence that children have on spending, either for themselves or for their parents, is also something that marketers have researched."  Miriam H. Zoll, “The Progress Report: Youngster Taught To Be Materialistic,” http://www.progress.org/ethics01.htm.

http://www. collegehumor http://www.collegehumor.com/embed/6868190/super- bowl-commercial-hyundai-kids-football-team

Is consumerism dangerous to children? Childhood obesity rates have more than doubled the last 20 years; the United States has become the largest consumer of ADHD medications in the world; and pediatric prescriptions for antidepressants have risen precipitously. The average American child spends 44 hours per week (more than 6 hours a day!) staring at some kind of electronic screen. Source: https://www.nwf.org/Be-Out-There/Why- Be-Out-There/Health-Benefits.aspx

“despite efforts to raise awareness about the role of toys in the reproduction of unhealthy gender stereotypes, the major toy chains still segregate by gender.”  

Age compression “the practice of taking products and marketing messages originally designed for older kids and targeting them to younger ones”  According to Schor, age compression “includes offering teen products and genres, pitching gratuitous violence to the twelve-and-under crowd, cultivating brand preferences for items that were previously unbranded among younger kids, and developing creative alcohol and tobacco advertising that is not officially targeted to them but is widely seen and greatly loved by children.”  

Anti-adultism

TRANS-TOYING Trans-toying is most noticeable in the supermarket aisle, where packaged goods companies have gotten ingenious in their attempts to turn what we eat into things kids can play with. Frito-Lay has come up with colored Cheetos, now available in a mystery color version. You have to eat them to see what color your mouth and tongue become. Lucky Charms changes what it does with every box. Quaker Oatmeal contains dinosaur eggs and other hidden treasures. And Ore-Ida has come out with Funky Fries, which are blue, or sugar coated, or cocoa flavored. (63)

[R]esearch has found that people who watch more television have pronounced biases in their perceptions of how wealthy Americans are, because television disproportionately shows wealthy and upper-middle-class lifestyles. Heavy viewers think that affluence is the norm, vastly exaggerating the proportion of the population with swimming pools, maids, and other luxuries. (64) Cast of True Jackson on Nickelodeon