Advertising to Kids

Last week, while we were visiting my friends in Edmonton, my daughter was exposed to more commercials than she had ever been exposed to, and it was kind of scary. My friend did not have Treehouse, and she only had three "kids" channels to choose from. YTV was not playing stuff I thought appropriate for my almost six year old daughter, so we opted for Retro Teletoon.

I am not sure who the target audience is for Retro Teletoon, but I do not think it is young children. Maybe they are trying to market to adults reliving their youth. Regardless, most of the ads were infomercials for products not geared to kids. After watching this channel with my daughter for a few minutes, she quickly told me I needed to buy several of the advertised products. Apparently, I need a No No hair removal gadget, and my husband can get one too. Our cat needs to have the Cat's Meow cat toy. I am surprised she did not encourage me to use the pay day loan service as well.

I was struck by how easily influenced my daughter was by such a brief exposure to these ads. My children do not normally watch TV with ads. At home, we watch DVDs, TFO and sometimes Treehouse. The channels we do watch only advertise their own shows. She also asked why I did not buy Frosted Flakes cereal. It must be good for us since the tiger is so sporty.

My friend took us to the library a few days into our visit and I was able to get her commercial free, french programming for a few days. I have been quite good at sheltering my children from most of the advertising frenzy geared toward children. My kids are mostly influenced by their fellow classmates and daycaremates. This exposure is plenty. My kids come home talking about products and TV shows we never watch at home. I still have no idea how my son knows about Skylanders.

I sometimes worry that I shelter them too much, but there is access to current media everywhere these days. I try to keep them watching French language shows, if at all possible. We almost always listen to French music, or Kindermusik, and their books are in French too. They are constantly bombarded by ads for toys through print, video games and movies, and I want to keep them sheltered as long as possible.

I am even quite strict on iPad use. I might be on my iPad every day, but until my kids are old enough to buy their own handheld devices, I will decide how often they play on mine. I will probably limit their access when they do buy their own too.

Posted with Blogsy