Marketing Strategies Are Preventing Children from Getting Active Play Time - Essay Example

Submitted: Marketing Strategies are Preventing Children from Getting Active Play Time It is no longer uncommon for a child of the 21st century to be medically diagnosed with diseases of the heart, high cholesterol, and even obesity. While most child experts prefer to blame the rise in such childhood illnesses on the preference of children to eat foods that are deemed unhealthy for them due to the ease by which they can access the “junk” food, the reality is that obesity and other related diseases are caused by the lack of activity on the child's part.

Children no longer have the same type of aggressive or physical game play like their 1990's counterparts due to the rise in technological systems that encourage them to completely “veg out” in front of their television or game console. This essay aims to shed light on this matter and provide its readers with alternative and creative ways by which a child may be encouraged to try to play active games that will help them get the kind of physical exercise that they need for their age. A closer look at the way marketing and media strategies by the Lego Institute have been changing over the years in order to supposedly help children develop their motor, sensory, and perceptions skills at a faster rate, will show that the interactive media also encourages loss of real play time that should be used to benefit the health development of children.

Electrical gadgets and interactive toys change the way that our children live their lives. While the brick and mortar toys of the past such as the Nerf-ball and SuperSoaker 2000 all encouraged highly active game play outside of the home where children can get the full benefits of exposure to sunlight and fresh air, the interactive video games of today instead encourage them to sit on their couch, put on headsets, and flick away with their thumbs while watching avatars move across their TV screen.

Such sedentary activities do not encourage anything more than Myopia and lethargy among young children. Although parents and child experts recognize this current play environment as disturbing and contributory to the health problems of developing children, they are powerless to stop its growth because the current play environment of the child is dictated by the marketing strategies of big toy corporations. This was the subject of a study done by Stanford University in which researchers concluded that these corporations have turned play time into a fashion related and social status activity for children.

Tagged as the “Sedentary Generation” by the Stanford University study, it would seem that technological advances over the past several decades have created a whole new platform by which children socialize and enjoy each others company. A significant increase in the ownership of television and ease of access by which game consoles can now be purchased has produced a decrease in physical activity outside of the school system. In fact, for some children, their only active play time would fall under Physical Education at school and nothing else.

Outside of this set up, the study indicates that there is a severe lack of public venues where children can safely play active games that could contribute to their health and well-being. Sprawling urban developments have destroyed or claimed the areas once used as public parks or backyard forests in family homes. Due to the lack of public play areas and increasing safety concerns about having children play in town and suburban streets, the chance for the generational passing of traditional childhood games from parent to child has been eliminated.

This has caused children to redefine their playtime and look to other influences such as television, for ways and means to play. It is this generation-to-generation play heritage gap that the marketing strategists have preyed and played upon and ultimately exploited. From movies to TV shows, cartoons and toy advertising - all of these factors help to market a totally new age of play time for children. All of these assure parents of safe, responsible, and educational play time experience for their child.

Unfortunately, this also means that the child will be in the house while playing either alone or with some other friends via an internet connection. We know that the toy developers and television show producers will always aim to keep the attention of the child on their products in order to encourage them to pressure their parents into buying them the latest toy or product line from an adventure show. Therefore, the responsibility of creating an outdoor play time activity for the child falls under the parent's direct supervision.

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, insuring that our children get enough outdoor active play time is a responsibility that should be shared by the community. It is of the utmost importance to the physical and mental well-being of today's generation of kids that parents and educators take an active stance in their physical development by promoting activities that will tear them away from the already traditional marketing strategies of the toy and gadget innovators. It can be done if our society takes an active stance in making it happen.

Works Cited “Building Generation Play: Addressing the Crisis of Inactivity Among America's Children”. Stanford University Prevention Research Center / Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanford University. Feb. 2007. Web. 9 May 2012. “Childhood Obesity”. Our strategy. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2012. Web. 6 May 2012. “The Changing Face of Children's Play Culture”. Lego Learning Institute. Lego Learning Institute. Nov. 2003. Web. 9 May 2012.