This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood

by Sharon Beder, Wendy Varney, Richard Gosden

Overview

This book investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be under-aged hyperconsumers as well as the submissive employees and uncritical citizens of the future.

Sharon Beder shows how marketers and advertisers are targeting ever younger children in a relentless campaign, transforming children's play into a commercial opportunity and taking advantage of childish anxieties. 

Beder investigates the corporate relations and ideals that infiltrate every aspect of our lives. She presents an alarming picture of how a child's social development — through education, health care and nutrition — has become an ordered conveyor belt of consumerist conditioning. Focusing on education in particular, Beder explains how businesses are taking control of more and more aspects of schooling, not only for profit but to erode state schooling and promote business values. Similarly, she shows how 'difficult' children are taught from an early age that pharmaceuticals can be used to discipline them or to make them 'happy'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745329161
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	07/20/2009
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sharon Beder is a visiting professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong. She is considered a leading authority on corporate and environmental issues, for which she has won a number of awards. She is the author of nine other books, including Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values (2006), Power Play: The Fight for Control of the World's Electricity (2003), Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR (2000) and Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (1997; 2nd ed. 2002).

Dr Wendy Varney is an honorary fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Dr Richard Gosden is a full time writer and researcher based in Australia. He is the author of Punishing the Patient: How Psychiatrists Misunderstand and Mistreat Schizophrenia (2001)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It is easy to exploit children – any fool can do it. It takes both strength and intelligence not to do so.

C. Glenn Cupit

Amanda's parents gave her an mp3 player for her thirteenth birthday. She had been nagging them for an iPod for months but they didn't understand, as her peers did, the importance of the iPod brand. So they got her another brand that they thought offered better value for money. Instead of being delighted she was depressed. It was the same with everything she had. Her mobile was two years old yet her parents couldn't understand the importance of having the latest model. She was sure that it was because she had second- or third-rate versions of everything that she was not popular at school.

Amanda's brother Andrew was in the bathroom vomiting. He had a school test today and he didn't do well in tests even though his teachers usually gave him good marks for school projects and essays. He thought too much about the questions and was able to think of more than one reasonable answer and this meant he took too long to do the test.

If he failed today's test Andrew would have to do extra classes on Saturday mornings and might have to give up music classes to make way for more reading classes. Andrew's parents wouldn't mind too much if this happened because they had to pay extra fees for those music classes. But music classes were the only part of school that Andrew liked. Otherwise he hated school. It was so boring! They never studied anything that he could relate to and it was all so repetitive. It seemed to be all tests and practice tests and preparing for tests.

Andrew's poor test results were likely to affect his ability to get into a good secondary school; he might have to go to the dilapidated school across the river where students have to pass through a metal detector and wear their coats in class because the heating doesn't work.

Their little sister Angie was having a tantrum in the kitchen because Mummy wouldn't buy the sugary cereal with Shrek on the packet that she saw on television. Amanda thought it wouldn't be long before Angie would be taking those little white pills that so many kids at school took when she was in primary school. In her school some of the older kids traded them along with other drugs to get a high.

Amanda, Andrew and Angie are too young to understand, but much of their discontent and many of their anxieties stem from the corporate capture of childhood, that is, the way modern business corporations shape children's dreams and desires, determine their school experience and influence their behaviour and values.

Modern affluent societies overflow with a cornucopia of goods produced for the entertainment, pleasure, convenience and education of children, yet increasingly there are signs that in some of the most prosperous nations, particularly English-speaking countries, something is amiss. Those same children seem to be less content, more stressed and less healthy than any previous generation.

In 2005 the UK National Consumer Council (NCC) found that British children were 'the least happy generation of the post-war era'. Towards the end of 2006 a group of over a hundred academics, teachers, psychologists and others wrote to the Daily Telegraph in the UK to express their deep concern about what was happening to children. They argued that 'the escalating incidence of childhood depression' as well as 'the rise of substance abuse, violence and self-harm amongst our young people', arose from the neglect of children's emotional and social needs. They blamed junk food, screen-based entertainment, 'an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum' and a 'hyper-competitive culture' as contributing factors.

Their concern was backed up by a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) assessment of the well-being of children in 21 affluent nations, published in 2007. It found that children in the US and the UK were worse off than in any of the other nations in the study, particularly with respect to family and peer relationships; behaviours and risks; health and safety in the case of the US; and subjective well-being in the case of the UK. Children aged 11, 13 and 15 were less likely to find their peers 'kind and helpful' in the UK and the US than in any of the other 21 nations apart from the Czech Republic. They ate less fruit and were more overweight. They smoked more cannabis and had more pregnancies. They tended to leave school at an earlier age. In the UK teenagers smoked more cigarettes, had sex, and got drunk more.

In a typical week in Australia, 10 per cent of high school students engage in binge drinking. Almost one in three primary school children is overweight or obese. Many teenagers are in debt. Almost half of children aged ten to 14 do not feel confident about themselves and more than half worry about what others think about them. A significant proportion of Australian children and teenagers are suffering anxiety and depression. One in ten 13- to 19-year-olds reported having mental or behavioural problems. The rates at which 13- to 19-year-olds are hospitalised for self-harm have increased 27 per cent since 1998–99. Suicide rates for males aged 15 to 25 more than tripled between 1960 and 2000 and the rate is now higher than in most other affluent nations.

In the US, suicide is the third highest cause of death for those between ten and 24 years old. Each year 4600 take their own lives and 142,000 are treated in hospital emergency departments for self-inflicted injuries. A nationwide survey of students in grades nine to 12 found that 17 per cent said they had seriously considered suicide, 13 per cent had planned suicide, and 8 per cent had attempted it in the previous year. The numbers of teenagers between 15 and 17 going to prison is increasing twice as fast as the rest of the population.

In the UK children are getting fatter, consuming more alcohol, committing more crime, and are increasingly excluded from schools. The rates of self-harm among young people are higher than anywhere else in Europe and it is estimated that one in 15 young people between eleven and 25 years of age self-harm. Each year 25,000 young people are admitted to hospital emergency departments in England and Wales as a result of deliberate self-inflicted injury. Many more are treated at home and never make it to hospital.

In September 2007 an even larger group of professionals, academics and writers again expressed their concern about the state of Britain's children. This time they blamed a decline in children's play as a major contributing factor in their deteriorating well-being. This in turn was attributed to factors such as 'the ready availability of sedentary, sometimes addictive screen-based entertainment; the aggressive marketing of over-elaborate, commercialised toys (which seem to inhibit rather than stimulate creative play); ... a test-driven school and preschool curriculum in which formal learning has substantially taken the place of free, unstructured play'.

This book argues that this rapid decline in children's well-being has, in large part, been caused by corporate interference in children's lives and psyches. Chapter 2 covers some of the many ways that corporations are targeting ever younger children with a barrage of advertising and marketing designed to foster discontent in children and turn them into hyper-consumers who define themselves by what they have rather than who they are. Chapter 3 shows how manufacturers and marketers have transformed children's play into a commercial opportunity; Chapter 4 how they have preyed on and taken advantage of childish anxieties and insecurities, reshaping their very identities.

Schools are no longer a haven from these commercial pressures, and Chapter 5 details how funding cuts have made them vulnerable to a massive infusion of corporate messages. Businesses seek to sell their goods to school children, as well as develop brand loyalty now and into the future, through sponsorships, competitions, communication technologies and industry-produced classroom materials.

Chapter 6 will reveal how business coalitions have persuaded governments around the world to turn schools into competing business enterprises where children are treated as inputs to be processed. Widespread reductions in school funding have caused governments to shift the goal of education from quality to efficiency, and the responsibility for school performance to 'devolved' school boards and principals who have to make do with inadequate budgets.

Chapter 7 explains why a widespread emphasis on standardised testing in schools has developed since the 1980s in English-speaking nations and evaluates the consequences. And in case there is any doubt that this push for standardised testing and educational efficiency has come from the corporate sector, Chapter 8 exposes the powerful business coalitions, the many interconnected business-funded advocacy groups, and the campaigns that have been behind it.

Chapters 9 and 10 show that corporations are taking control of more and more aspects of schooling, not only to ensure that schools produce submissive employees with basic skills, but also to prevent the development of critical-thinking faculties in schools. Business interests are driving the renewed emphasis in schools on long hours, discipline, rewards and punishments as well as the narrowing curriculum that emphasises literacy, numeracy, computer skills and a business-friendly view of history and society.

Chapter 11 covers the flood of corporate-sponsored classroom materials that teachers are being offered. These provide a distorted picture of environmental, economic, health and social issues so as to fulfil the public relations needs of industries, particularly those in the health, environment and energy sectors, and also promote a wider ideology of free market economics.

The move towards private provision of educational services that has occurred in many English-speaking countries since the 1980s is covered in Chapter 12. This includes the privatisation of the local educational authorities (LEAs) and the establishment of academies in the UK, and the proliferation of charter schools in the US. The chapter evaluates the outcomes of these privatisations.

The corporate push for schools to compete for students in an educational marketplace, in the name of 'school choice', has manifested as open enrolments in the UK and Australia, and a campaign for school vouchers in the US. Chapter 13 discusses the consequences of this in terms of equity and how the right of every child to receive a high-quality public education has been replaced by the right of parents to choose the school their children will attend. The role of corporations, and the foundations they fund, in promoting privatisation of schooling and competitive education markets, is covered in Chapter 14.

Finally, Chapter 15 reveals how children who are naughty, lively, bored, inattentive or depressed as a result of the assaults described in previous chapters, are identified in schools and disciplined through the use of psychiatric drugs. It analyses the way that the pharmaceutical industry portrays these 'medications' as a way of 'normalising' children's thinking and behaviour in order to expand the child and adolescent market for psychiatric drugs.

The consequence of this corporate capture of childhood has been a generation of children who have been manipulated, shaped and exploited as never before in history. Not only have they lost the opportunity to play and develop at their own pace, their psyches have been damaged and their view of the world distorted. They are trained rather than educated and constantly tested to make sure they have absorbed the 'correct' information. They are supposed to seek happiness in possessions, treat relationships as a means to an end, and incessantly compete with each other. Children have never before been under such pressure to 'succeed, conform and look good'. It is little wonder that so many children grow into youths who are unhappy, stressed, fat, delinquent or self-destructive.

This book will show that nearly all of the problems facing children today are a direct result of the efforts of corporations to make profits from children and to shape and socialise them to suit business interests.

CHAPTER 2

Turning Children into Consumers

For the first time in human history, children are born into homes where mass-mediated storytellers reach them on average more than seven hours a day. Most waking hours, and often dreams, are filled with their stories. These stories do not come from families, schools, churches, neighbourhoods, and often not even from the native countries. They come from a small group of distant conglomerates with something to sell.

George Gerbner

Langbourne Rust advises those who are trying to reach toddlers in grocery shopping trolleys, to 'direct information on the cart to the child inside ... The child taking a ride is a captive, and sometimes restless audience, hungry for focus and stimulation.' He recommends that retailers display products at cart height and make sure it is noticeable from 'middle-of-the-aisle distance'. And he counsels advertisers to incorporate the image of children riding in carts in their advertising imagery so the connection can be made by the child between the advertised product and the store.

Rust also suggests advertisers and marketers take advantage of the way toddlers point to things they want by incorporating 'physical gesturing in advertising copy: Why not develop pointing as a routine or ritualistic part of what people do when they see your product?' He suggests that products need to be easily recognisable from long distances so the child can see them coming up the aisle and be prepared to ask for them when they get closer.

Langbourne Rust Research Inc. is one of many consultancies catering to corporations that want to sell their products to children. Its website claims: 'Dozens of companies, including Walt Disney, have used us to teach them about how to reach kids.' 'Kids' is marketing speak for children. The term 'children' evokes notions of vulnerability and adult responsibility to protect them. 'Kids', on the other hand, evokes notions of play and fun.

Children are naive about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that over time they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties that can be profitable for decades to come. What is more, children influence family spending decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars on household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car.

Corporations began targeting their marketing messages directly to children during the 1980s, as affluent adult markets became saturated with consumer goods. Large firms established 'kids' departments and smaller firms specialised in marketing to children. A number of advertising industry publications were created such as Selling to Kids and Marketing to Kids Report. The academic literature began to feature studies of children as consumers.

In the US the amount corporations spent marketing to children under twelve increased by five times between 1980 and 1990 and ten times more during the 1990s. In 2004 around $15 billion was being spent marketing to children. In Australia the number of advertisements aimed at children tripled between the 1980s and 2002. Conferences on the best ways to market to children are held all over the world. There are also awards for the best advertisements and marketing campaigns, with hundreds of entries.

Much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations exercises such as using celebrities and licensed characters to visit shopping centres and schools. These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the children's market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising.

The international children's market is increasingly attractive to transnational corporations who seek to make their brands and products popular in different cultural milieus. The food industry was a pioneer in these efforts. In 1997 Brandweek magazine noted that McDonald's was the favourite fast food all over the world and Coca-Cola the favourite drink.

COMING TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU

Not only are there many more advertisements aimed at children but they are increasingly infiltrating the private and public spaces where children play and learn. Today's children are confronted with advertisements almost everywhere they go. There are now television stations, radio stations, newspapers and magazines delivering underage audiences to advertisers 24 hours a day. As the amount of money being spent increased, the age that children were targeted decreased. A marketing conference in 2000 in New York was entitled 'Play-Time, Snack-Time, Tot-Time: Targeting Pre-Schoolers and their Parents'. There is even a US cable station, BabyFirstTV, which aims at under-two-year-olds.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "This Little Kiddy Went to Market"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Sharon Beder.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Turning Children into Consumers
2. Turning Play into Business
3. Branding Childish Identities
4. Teaching Consumer Values
5. Turning Schools into Businesses
6. Making Schools Accountable
7. Business Campaigns
8. Made to Order
9. Dumbing Down Future Citizens
10. Teaching Corporate Values
11. Privatising Schools
12. Turning Schools into Markets
13. Privatisation Proponents
14. Controlling Wayward Children
Conclusion
Notes

Editorial Reviews

'Beder's analysis is comprehensive, steely and clinical' - Harold Pinter 'Outstanding ... This is such an important book that I would put it on every school curriculum' - John Pilger 'A chilling assessment of modern commercial culture and how it distorts childhood, corrupts civic institutions, and endangers the planet' - Alex Molnar, Arizona State University

From the Publisher