Class 23: Growing Up
Document Actions
Prof. Jessica Collett, University of Notre Dame. "Introduction to Social Psychology" lecture notes - Growing Up
Class Notes
The reading for this session, a selection from Juliet Schor's book Born to Buy, discussed how advertising companies are marketing to kids. Advertising executives use a number of techniques to market directly to children. It's not just in advertising though, but also in children's TV shows and movies.
- Anti-adult mentality
- Marketing "cool"
- Tie product to popularity
- Feedback loop - tie what kids are thinking and kids look to what is out there
- Age compression (example, Seventeen Magazine being marketed to 13-year-olds or Bratz dolls who look like old teenagers marketed to preteens)
- Trans-toying- making everyday products a toy
- Pester-power, the "nag" factor- teaching children to pester their parents because parents have the money to purchase items
- Reality versus fantasy- blurring the line between what is real and what is imaginary
- Independence of children from children
- Dual Messages- one message aimed at parents and one aimed at children. (Example: Happy Meal commercials often appeal to children because it is fun to eat and has a toy, but adults can interpret the commercial as having a good family moment and a quick meal)
Activity
Watch an episode of the Cartoon Network show Codename: Kids Next Door entitled Operation: S.U.P.P.O.R.T (for overview, click here). By going through the list of techniques discussed by Schor, can you identify some of these same techniques used in the Codename: Kids Next Door episode? What messages do you think the children who watch this episode are absorbing?
Copyright 2012,
by the Contributing Authors.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
Cite/attribute Resource.
Collett, J. (2009, January 14). Class 23: Growing Up. Retrieved May 21, 2012, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/sociology/introduction-to-social-psychology/lectures/class-growing-up.
