Stuffing
Our Kids:
Should
Psychologists Help Advertisers Manipulate Children?
Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., and Tim Kasser, Ph.D. (1)
Editors Note: This article was unsolicited by The School Psychologist.
While an editorial decision was made to publish it, the opinions expressed are
the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of The School
Psychologist, Division 16, or the American Psychological Association.
Advertising to children has become big business in recent years, with kids under 12 spending over 24 billion dollars of their own money in 1997 and directly influencing the spending of 188 billion more (McNeal, 1998). This surge in child consumerism has resulted in a keen interest among marketers in knowing what makes kids tick. To learn more, advertisers have hired well-paid psychological consultants to help them study every phase and stage of a child’s life. The results are sophisticated, finely-honed commercials that work.
When
psychologists engage in such consulting practices, their media-amplified impact
is enormous - and it will continue to grow, as there is no end in sight to the
expanding child market. These practices raise grave ethical concerns regarding
the proper use of psychological expertise and threaten the public’s trust in
the profession.
For
this reason, along with Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert, a Washington-based
advocacy group, we recently sent a letter to the American Psychological
Association (APA) asking it to address these issues.2 The letter,
endorsed by 60 psychologists and other mental health professionals, requested
that APA “[i]ssue a formal public statement denouncing the use of
psychological techniques to assist corporate marketing and advertising to
children,” and that it amend its code of ethics appropriately. We further
urged APA to launch a campaign to educate the public about the ongoing abuse of
psychological knowledge by the child advertising industry. APA has referred the
letter to its Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest,
which meets in March.
Some
child advertisers candidly admit that their commercials exploit children and
create family conflicts. According to Nancy Shalek, then president of Shalek
Agency, “Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their
product, you’re a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them to
buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them they’ll be a dork if
they don’t, you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional
vulnerabilities, and it’s easy to do with kids because they’re the most
vulnerable” (as quoted in Ruskin, 1999, p. 42).
Marketers
also work hard to increase their product’s “nag factor,” a term which
refers to how often and how vehemently children pressure parents to buy an item.
In one of our practices (Kanner), parents have approached the therapist in
turmoil over how to respond to such nagging. They feel guilty about purchasing
items, such as junk food or violent video games, that they believe are bad for
their kids. On the other hand, they worry that by constantly saying “no”
they will increase their child’s depression or worsen an already strained
parent-child relationship.
Another
disturbing trend in child advertising is the targeting of very young children.
Mike Searles, then president of Kids-R-Us, a major children’s clothing store,
believes there are great advantages to hooking a child as soon as possible:
“[I]f you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to
come. Companies are saying ‘Hey, I want to own the kid younger and
younger’” (as quoted in Ruskin, 1999, p. 42).
Psychologist
Dan Acuff (1998) in his recent book What
Kids Buy and Why offers marketers detailed advice on advertising to 2-year
olds. He suggests that commercials include animals or animal characters, feature
characters that are round or curvy in shape, and proceed at a slow pace that
most adults would find tedious. His recommendations are based on studies
showing, respectively, that up to 80% of young children’s dreams are of
animals, that toddlers associate round, curvy shapes with “good guys” and
jagged, crooked lines with “bad guys,” and that very young children are not
“wired” for fast-paced programming with quickly changing scenes and images.
Thus, Dr. Acuff has integrated a diverse yet highly specialized set of studies
to help marketers manipulate these highly vulnerable toddlers.
What
is the proper relationship of child psychology to advertising? Given the
unprecedented volume of commercials to which children are exposed today, along
with their increasing sophistication, to answer this question we need to
consider the cumulative impact of ads. Specifically, we can inquire as to
whether, taken as a whole, modern advertising emotionally harms children.
Indeed, there is good reason to believe it does.
Studies
on “materialism” show that individuals highly focused on materialistic
values also report less satisfaction with life, less happiness, worse
interpersonal relationships, more drug and alcohol abuse, and less contribution
to community (see Cohen & Cohen, 1995; Kasser, 2000; Sirgy, 1999). Yet
materialistic values are the very ones that commercials pound into our children
day in and day out.
Consistent
with these findings, Kanner and Gomes (1995) have written about the narcissistic
wounding of our youth that occurs when advertisements make children feel deeply
inadequate unless they purchase an endless array of new products and services.
We have described this process as contributing to the formation of a shallow
“consumer identity” that is obsessed with instant gratification and material
wealth.
In
addition to inculcating materialistic values, commercials deceive and manipulate
children on a massive scale. The false promises of popularity, success, and
attractiveness that marketers routinely make for their products are such common
lies that we have become inured to their dishonesty. Yet from our clinical work
we know that when adults chronically deceive and manipulate a child, it erodes
the youngster’s ability to trust others and feel secure in the world. We would
expect the falsehoods and distortions in commercials to have a similar effect.
Curiously,
the overall adverse impact of advertising on children has been largely ignored
by psychology, just as psychologists who consult with child marketers have gone
virtually unchallenged. This state of affairs reflects a more general failure of
the field to critically examine the consumer values and beliefs that have
transformed American society during the 20th century.
Our
letter to APA is thus intended to do much more than halt the questionable
consulting activities of some psychologists. It is a call to psychology, at long
last, to take action against the commercialization of our youth.
WHAT
YOU CAN DO: To support the proposals
outlined in our letter, call APA President Patrick DeLeon, Ph.D.,
(1-800/374-2721) and your division and state chapter presidents.
1 An earlier version of this paper appeared in the February, 2000 issue of The California Psychologist.
2 A copy of the letter can be obtained by contacting either author (see end of article) or by viewing Commercial Alert’s website “www.essential.org/alert/psychology/apaletter.”
Acuff,
D. (1997). What kids buy and why. NY:
The Free Press.
Cohen,
P., & Cohen, J. (1996). Life values
and adolescent mental health. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kanner,
A.D., & Gomes, M.E. (1995). The all-consuming self. In T. Roszak, M.E.
Gomes, & A.D. Kanner (Eds.) Ecopsychology:
Restoring the Earth, healing the mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Kasser,
T. (2000). Two versions of the American dream: Which goals and values make for a
high quality of life? In E. Diener & D. Rahtz, (Eds.)Advances in quality of life theory and research. Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer.
McNeal,
J.V. (1998). Tapping the three kids’ markets. American Demographics, 20, 36.
Ruskin,
G. (1999). Why they whine: How corporations prey on our children. Mothering,
97,. 41-50.
Sirgy,
M.J. (1999). Materialism and quality of life. Social Indicators Research, 43, 227-260.
Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is an associate faculty member
of the Wright Institute and a child, family, and adult therapist in Berkeley,
CA. He is co-editor of Ecopsychology:
Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind and has conducted research on the
impact of daily hassles and uplifts on health and well-being in children and
adults. He can be reached at
510/526-8613.
Tim Kasser, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of
psychology at Knox College and the author of various empirical articles and book
chapters on values, goals, and well-being. He can be reached at 309/341-7283 or
“tkasser@knox.edu.”