Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood - Essay Example

[Your full June 22, Movie Review In “Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood”, which is a 60-minute documentary film, the filmmakers, Adriana Barbaro and Jeremy Earp, have tried to show to the society how mass media is exploiting kids to make them their unsurpassed consumers. Children are being affected by the media every day and every moment they sit in front of the television. This eventually affects the whole society. American businesses are now targeting children because they form a huge part of American population today.

The film is about the multi-billion dollar marketing machine that tends to sell the kids and their families things related to kids like violent video games, educational items, family car, and etcetera. The idea behind is that kids spend or make their parents spend a lot of money on things like video games, junk food, electronic items, and the like, and thus this spent money forms are great part of the country’s economy. Hence, advertisers and businesses are targeting the child population because children have an influence over purchasing and making decisions in all small and big shopping.

Parents become helpless. Companies have started calculating the nagging factor which determines how much anger or stubbornness kids have to show to their parents in order to persuade them to buy something of their choice. Mass media is blindfolding kids through marketing in schools, public places, homes, and through television, internet and DVDs. Companies present new brands in front of kids and attract them through suggestive content that is shown to them through marketing services. Children get attracted to the sexually suggestive content shown in the advertisements.

They get fascinated through watching violence in video games. They are attracted toward buying new brands of cereals, clothes, bedspreads, kids’ furniture, school bags and lunch boxes. Marketers understand the psychology of children and control them. Ethics are not taken into account while marketing the products and this inculcates unethical values amongst the children. They tend to learn violence, aggression, and sexual fantasies and then try to imply these things in their own lives. Also, they learn that they are supposed to get everything they see and then force their parents to provide them with everything they are attracted to.

This affects even their health and well-being. In short, this film is an interesting documentary showing kids being influenced into consumerism through marketing in mass media, which tends to control the brains of young kids through creating attractive influences over young minds. The most shocking thing is that even the educational products contain such content that exploits young kids. Parents have to be aware of the books, CDs and DVDs that they buy for their kids. It is all the business of dollars.

This is an eye-opener for the society and especially the parents who are recommended to have a control over their children’s exposure to mass media. No matter this is difficult in this fast paced age, yet the need for creating awareness among parents is crucial so that they take measures to limit the contact of their kids with mass media.