I thought that this video was really interesting, and spoke on a lot of the topics that we discussed in class. It discussed how advertising towards children has changed drastically, even since the 1970’s. The video talked about how from the moment children are born they are advertised to. Companies are trying to turn them into “lifelong consumers,” or “super consumers.” The video also discussed how children are at the time of their life that they are forming their values and attitudes. It reinforced the idea that boys are advertised to one way and girls another. In advertising, movies and books, boys are shown that they need to be “tough, strong, and ready to fight,” and girls are shown that they should be “pretty, sexy, and that how they look determines their value.”
I thought that the video raised a lot of interesting questions and concerns to do with the amount of advertising that is directed at children. One question that I found interesting was, “at what point should children and families take precedence over corporate profit?” I think that this issue deserves a lot of thought. Companies now have the ability to advertise to kids almost everywhere they go, and they take full advantage of this opportunity that modern technology has given to them. But the question raised in the video was how is all this advertising going to affect children in the long term? The video seemed to come to the conclusion that it is not going to lead to good effects, and I agree with this. Through my observations of children, I have noticed that from an increasingly young age children are concerned with brand names, and the next best toy. We as a society are causing this, and I don’t think that it is a good thing.
Another quote in the video really stood out to me as the general message that the video is trying to convey. “We have become a country that places lower priority on our children’s emotional, cognitive, social, even spiritual development then it does on training them to be little consumers.” I think that most people might not even be aware that this is occurring, but it is to a great extent. I don’t think that most parents would want this to be happening, and perhaps through greater awareness on this issue they would rethink some of the values that are being imposed onto their children. To me a child’s emotional, cognitive, social and spiritual development should be way more important than teaching them to consume. Entering into the teaching profession, I think it is important to consider issues like this, and take measures to work against it. In my experience, a teacher can have a world of impact on kids, and they can be an important figure in instilling values into a child’s life. This is a tremendously huge responsibility, but also a tremendously huge opportunity, that I, as a teacher, hope I remember and use in my classroom.
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