In the 1980s it was the bane of American society – manipulation of children. To the marketeer, of course, it’s a golden opportunity – children are easy targets and very lucrative ones. In China, since the single baby law, we have a generation of “Little Emperors” who are pampered and spoilt, and, most importantly for the marketer, whose every wish is granted. In India, we are no different really.
Why are our Children Manipulated by the Media? [Illustration by Shiju George]
Children are easier to persuade
We know that everyone can persuade children easily except their parents. I remember a promotion by a potato chips firm that gave ‘tazos’ as free gifts inside the pack. Children bought these packs way more than normal and compared their tazos, formed patterns, et al.
These tazos were cardboard circles with splits cut in – crude building blocks that children would never buy from a game store for their cheap material. This is not to say that they are a gullible generation – remember the plastic Cibaca ke nanhe janwar for the previous generation?
Children do not ask as many questions
They do not put an offer to serious critical and rational tests. Not that many adults do either, but children simply cannot – for a variety of reasons, the chief among them being that they do not have the training to do any cost benefit analysis of offers. If they see their parents do it consciously, they might understand that it ought to be done.
But marketing companies put children under tremendous peer pressure, and children are the least prepared to resist peer pressure. If everyone in the group is picking up WWF cards, no child can brave not picking them up.
Why are our Children Manipulated by the Media? [Illustration by Shiju George]
With less outdoor activities and social interaction, children are more exposed to television and the Internet. This is a worldwide phenomenon.
As a result, children are more informed about products. This puts them in a better position to make recommendations to parents. “If we have to buy a music system, lets try Philips, it has that XYZ feature”. “TV? Lets try Sony Trinitron – it has the best picture.” Sounds familiar? You are in minority if it doesn’t.
Most parents listen to and even encourage recommendations from children – in a bid to boost their confidence perhaps, or maybe to actually benefit from the information a child has.
However, this increases the say a child has in buying decisions. Add to that the emotional pressure a pampered child can exert on parents and you have a strong case for marketers – all marketers, to target children.
Children have higher buying power and discretionary expenditure
They have more pocket money, which translates into more discretion in their personal purchases at the school canteen. These purchases then are influenced by peers – other children equally influenced by the media.
Once we have understood why it is profitable for media and the market to target our children, we need to ask if it is really so bad after all. Well, not entirely. To be better informed is certainly not bad. What is bad is to be manipulated. And that is done.
Marketeers and advertisements try to manipulate everyone – they have to sell if they have to strike a chord somewhere. However, as adults, we have some discretion in asking, “Behind the emotional hoopla and the hype, what is this product offering me?” Children, do not always have it. Also, the kind of peer pressure built up by advertising is not, in my opinion, in the child’s best interests.
What can parents and elders do?
Well, that is a difficult question. Honestly, there are no formula remedies, but there are certain things we can do. Most important, of course, is to communicate to the child that he or she is being manipulated. This can be done in two ways – through dialogue and by practical conduct based illustration of behaviour.
Remember, the pressure working on the child is great and two-fold, the advertiser’s persuasion and the consequent induced peer group pressure. If the child has to decide what s/he really wants, and decide whether s/he really wants an extra pack of potato chips, s/he must understand what is prompting her decision.
I have seen children mention a particular brand to their mothers and insist that they buy it. When I asked them why they wanted that particular brand, they had no answer. However, for the marketeer, a sale has been made. That is important.
It must be remembered that so long as these sales are made by influencing children and forcing parents, the incentive for the marketeer remains.
This is not to say that the marketeer is the devil incarnate. No – it is his job to sell. If manipulation helps, and we keep ourselves prone to manipulation, can we really blame the marketeer for our weakness?
Dialogue: how do we do it?
Talk to your child. And do not say, “You are being manipulated! You do not know that!” Relax, very often, we do not know that either. When there is a new scheme or the child insists that a certain purchase be made, a purchase you know is irrational, find the time to talk to your child.
No, one does not need a counselling chamber for that. You are cooking and your child is munching on the fresh vegetables. Time enough. This is, of course, assuming that the child is not glued to the television or the Internet.
Ask questions like “Why do you want this?” “If this was not on offer, would you go out and buy this thing?” “If you will not buy it, are you sure you want it? What use is it?”
Do not tell the child that s/he is being manipulated. Let the young one make the realisation herself/himself. That is assuming that you can keep the conversation going long enough and not make the child defensive. And the best way to do that is by not sounding evaluative.
Ask for information to understand, not to condemn. You are handling a very serious issue here. Let the child decide whether s/he wants the freebie, or whether the freebie is worth anything at all to the child personally. Chances are, in a while, your child will begin to evaluate these offers on her/his own – you can’t ask for a better result! That is a conscious consumer!
Another issue arises at this point – what if it becomes clear that the child needs to buy WWF cards because everyone else has them and he is the only one who doesn’t? Now, you cannot fight his peer group. Nor can you go to every child in the locality or school. At that point, you can at best leave your child with the conscious knowledge that she or he is doing something only because everyone else is.
And please don’t try the “If everyone jumps in to the well, will you do that too?” strategy – it’s old, out of fashion, predictable and hypocritical, because we often do enough things just because everyone else does it.
And children observe, even if they act according to our training and don’t ‘talk back’ and tell us what they think. In fact, the more one works with parents and children, the more one is surprised at how very alike they are. And then, it really isn’t easy to believe parents have any moral right to “order” or “teach” the child anything more than social protocol. A lot of us just never grow up!
Behaviour: how to illustrate?
If you do not want your child to be manipulated by marketing, do not be manipulated yourself. Let the child see you evaluate the commercial offers. Some of them are good. Some others are not. Please remember that the child has in all probability never seen you resist advertising or an attempt at manipulation. “Ek katori free with XYZ” has spurred purchases, without realising that the katori does not cost much at all!
I have seen my mother buy poly-pack after poly-pack of a certain brand of oil, just because there was a bowl free with it and she wanted to “complete her set”.
That it was a perfectly useless set because it was too small to serve anything in and that it was never used, is besides the point. This is the conduct we display as adults. We do not even stop to ask ourselves if what is being offered is what we really want.
Can we then blame the children for their gullibility? The lure of freebies is not easy to resist. The sheer magnitude of the effect on children necessitates action.
So, what do we do? It is difficult, but if we want our children to be better consumers, we will just have to be better consumers ourselves, and we will have to make sure they see us that way. Discuss offers with them.
For instance, there was a spate of “Exchange your television” promotion schemes. I have often wondered what the television companies got by this scheme. I finally read a hypothesis in a magazine, which seemed to explain it well. But if your family discusses this on the dinner table one day, then irrespective of whether or not you opt for the scheme, you have demonstrated to the child that you evaluate. THAT is important.
And honestly, if we evaluate, we will not jump for half the offers in the market. And hopefully, we will also avoid the other extreme – of avoiding all offers uniformly – dubbing them all as ‘cheats’. Not all offers are bad. Some, in fact, are win-win situations for the consumer and the firms. The idea is to identify these. A blanket attitude of good and bad rubs off onto the child. And then we cannot blame the child.
Yes, children as a consumer group are increasing in importance. So is the ad-spend directed at children. As a parent, I do not find it fair. It puts the child under pressure and she or he is forced to chew more inputs and persuasion than can be swallowed. Also, I am not in favour of children becoming ‘terror weapons’ that marketeers can use against parents. That, too, is not fair.
