Childhood Consumerism And Consumption Media Essay

Childhood Consumerism And Consumption Media EssayDuring the rise of consumer floriculture in the nine teenagedth century, children and childhood were called on to fulfill a range of important roles. In addition to being consumers themselves, the young functioned as both goods to be employ and consumed by adults and as proof that middle-class materialist ventures were assisting in the formation of a more ethical society. Children also provided necessary labor and raw material for industry. However, in todays corporate world, youth culture is largely the creation of marketers, corporations and those interested in getting rich off youth through popular culture. The young passel have been targeted by the blown-up business and the advertising industry to bolster their revenue. Although primarily discussing the American situation, the globalization of youth culture means the findings ar applicable to nearly of the world. Indeed, given the global reach of such icons of American popul ar culture as MTV, McDonalds and Coke, almost no culture is immune from its effect.Un standardised in the past centuries, presently children and teens are growing up in a world do up of advertisers, marketers and corporate giants who are doing all they can to run off every last dollar out of the lucrative youth market. And they are succeeding. Douglas Rushkoff media critic saidFor todays teens, a walk in the street may as well be a stroll through the mall. Anywhere they rest their eyes theyll be exposed to a marketing message. A typical American teenager will process over 3,000 discrete advertisements in a single day, and 10 million by the time theyre 18. Kids are also devour massive quantities of entertainment media. Its a blizzard of brands, all competing for the same kids. To win teens loyalty, marketers believe, they have to speak their language the best. So they study them carefully, as an anthropologist would an exotic domestic culture, (Mooks and Midriffs, 2006).They spen d their days browsing through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the next big thing, which will attract the attention of their prey, a market segment worth an estimated $150 one thousand million a year. Businesses are creating and selling popular culture which has made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. They simply not reflecting teendesires, rather they are manufacturing those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market.Not only are they selling the goods but they are also dictating the market and consumer behavior. Like Mark Crispin Miller said, advertising has evermore sold anxiety, and it certainly sells anxiety to the young people. Its always telling them theyre losers unless theyre cool (Merchants of cool, 2000). Corporations invest a lot of money just to research what is cool and what is not. The problem is, cool come ups changing, simp ly because kids keep changing. And the corporations struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in cool. The corporate world slews with this problem not by just mapping cool, but to create cool. This in fact has decease much of the strategy of the businesses to create cool, while claiming to simply be reflecting cool. Thus they are no longer selling a product, they are selling a lifestyle. This process is done in part by doing market research into what teens like, then repackaging and re-selling it back to them. Marketers extensively interview young people to see what they wear, what they eat, what they buy, what they hark to, and so on, then repackage the results into a sellable commodity. Robert McChesney explainedThe entertainment companies, which are a handful of massive conglomerates that own four of the five music companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States-those same companies also own all the film studios, all the major TV networks, all the TV station pretty much in the 10 largest markets. They own all or part of every single commercial cable channel. They look at the teen market as part of this massive empire that theyre colonizing. . . . Teens are like Africa . . . that theyre going to take over, and their weapons system are films, music, books, CDs, Internet access, clothing, amusement parks, sports teams. Thats all this weaponry they have to make money off of this market.Everything on MTV is a commercial. . . . Sometimes its an explicit advertisement paid for by a company to sell a product. Sometimes its going to be a video for a music company there to sell music. Sometimes its going to be the set thats change with trendy clothes and stuff there to sell a look that will include products on that set. Sometimes it will be a draw about an upcoming movie paid for by the studio, though you dont know it, to hype a movie thats coming out from Hollywood. But everythings an infomercial. in that respect is no non-commercial part of MTV, (Cultural Manipulation, 2004).Young peoples incomes continue to grow, as does their influence over their food and drink intake and personal care use. The youths market is evolving, making stereotypical views of children outdated. fit to Global IssuesOn average children watch 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials annually. Businesses spend about $15-17 billion advertising to children in the US. $160 billion is spent annually by teens. Children (under 12) spend almost $18 billion a year. 8-12 year olds this category has more influence on the market spend more than $30 billion a year. The young people influence parental spending over $130-670 billion a year, (Anup Shah, 2008)Mark Crispin Miller said Teenagers suffer from acute unease to begin with. Their bodies are changing and they feel awkward and they often are awkward. So thats already a kind of psychological problem, a burden for most kids. This system comes along and heightens that anxiety by constantly confronting ever y kid with a kind of mirror in which youre supposed to look at yourself and like what you see or not like what you see, depending on whether youve bought the stuff that theyre selling, (interview Mark Crispin Miller). This is due mainly to the companys advertising strategies suggesting sexuality beauty for girls and for boys there is an emphasis to demo them as tough.Seeing that this has become a huge world problem some countries have taken an initiative to control commercials targeting young people. For example in Sweden banned commercials during childrens prime time. The European Union is deliberating issues related to advertising targeting the young people, whether they should be a European wide ban or a regulation. There is an international biannual conference that is organized with aim of dealing with topics such as childhood consumption practices, childrens roles in the consumer decision-making process, media, consumption and youth culture, public constitution and media regu lation. Contrary to what is happening Europe in the US business is business. Since the constitution recognizes children to have their rights it is hard for parents to fully deal with the situation without governments support.The best way to deal with this is for the concerned parties, especially the government, teachers and parents join hands into educating the better ways on spending and how these so called corporate friends are manipulating them into spending. And since consumerism among the youth has become a culture it is better to approach the subject with respect if the message is to be effective.