As a child, I can remember questioning my parent’s rules
regarding what television networks I was allowed to watch and wondering why I was
given a time limit for the amount of TV I could watch each day. After watching
the movie “Consuming Kids”, I began to see the reasoning behind my parents’
rules and restrictions regarding television.
Released in 2008, this documentary sheds light on the
multi-billion dollar marketing industry targeting children. By saying that
children are able to convince their parents to buy them anything by throwing
fits, marketing executives have begun to orient their marketing tactics towards
the younger generations. These strategies are used to sell anything and
everything from educational products to violent video games and junk food. “Consuming
Kids” showcases the use of neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in these
commercials and hopes to spark an ethics debate about the impacts this
marketing has on the well-being of children.
Personally, this documentary scared me. Young children are so
impressionable and will usually believe anything an adult tells them because
they are taught to trust in authority. Being young and naïve, kids don’t realize
the hidden messages behind what is being shown to them in various TV
commercials and even in the shows that they watch. They only see the fun
aspects of the products being shown to them and instantaneously believe that
they cannot live without the product.
“Consuming Kids” showed a home video of two young girls
around the age of three at a grocery store. They were picking out gummies and
were drawn towards the Scooby-Doo packaging. The man behind the camera asked
them why they chose that particular type of gummy and the girls’ response was
that it was the best. When asked what made these gummies better than the other
brands on the shelf, the girls replied that they had never tried these gummies
but knew they would be better than the rest because they were shaped like
various Scooby-Doo characters. The girls’ reactions are a perfect example that
these marketing tactics work. Without
even having tried the product, these very young girls knew that these were the
gummies they wanted because they trusted that their friend Scooby-Doo wouldn’t
lead them astray. Another way “Consuming Kids” highlighted this form of target
marketing was when they gave the statistic that the SpongeBob variety of Kraft
Macaroni & Cheese is the most popular. In both of these instances,
companies are using the familiarity of these characters to draw children in to
their products.
Another alarming part of this documentary to me was when they
cast a spotlight on the company Girls Intelligence Agency (GIA). This company is a marketing firm that “sponsors” girls’ sleepovers. The party
hosts/“special agents” are given a box of various products to distribute to
their guests and sample questions to ask regarding the quality of the products.
The agents then report back to the company their findings about their friends’
opinions of the products. To the company, both parties benefit from these events,
but it seems a little strange to me. The girl hosting the sleepover is expected
to ask questions that probe into the thoughts of her guests, all to determine
the future success of a given product.
Overall, I thought that “Consuming Kids” was a very
informative documentary. It succeeded in its goal of making me question the
ethics involved in marketing towards children. Looking back, I now understand
why my parents were so strict about TV time and the channels I could watch.
They didn’t want me to be exposed to all of the various commercials and shows
that would inevitably make me want the latest and greatest products.
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