Consuming Kids

I was really surprised when I watched this video because when I told my mom I wanted to study psychology, she suggested I minor in marketing. After seeing this film, however, I don't think I'll be using psychology for marketing. I have always been really shocked at how kids are getting Ipods and cell phones at such young ages, and are wearing extremely expensive designer clothes, makeups, and simply trying to look and act older at such a young age. But after seeing this video, I realized that some the ways children are marketed to can be seen everywhere. When kids are kids, they should be interacting with each other, maintaining that childhood innocence that starts to fade in middle school when kids start separating into groups and judging each other. When I was a kid, everyone would play together and you could make a new friend by simply asking, but with media spreading consumerism and marketing to young kids, they think that in order to be "cool," succeed, and have friends, they need to buy whatever product is being promoted as "cool." Marketers also use TV shows and characters that they know children love in order to draw child consumerism, but this also causes cliques to occur and teaches kids that clothes define who you are. Even worse is when kids think that they need to wear skimpy clothing, as promoted by media, to define who they are. Not only is it expensive to dress kids in skimpy designer clothes with styled hair and makeup, but it also teaches kids to be obsessed with their self image. This is especially harmful for girls who have increasing pressure to look beautiful and sexy, and this can lead to low self esteem. Creating child consumers is also harmful because at such a young age, these kids are learning that money is everything, so their values become about making money so they can spend more to look "cool", even if they have to manipulate there friends, which was seen in the video with the creation of the GIA.