My topic for the upcoming research paper is on the
psychology of advertising to children, and how this leads to materialism. The
probable research question is: what are the current advertising strategies and
methods that marketers use to target pre-teens? The link to popular culture
regards how the modern strategies of marketing to children are accepted without
question by mainstream society. Marketing is pop culture in itself because it
represents the current trends—what is propagated by advertisers. Habitually
shown, it becomes a process of brainwash: “I must have this,” “I must be this,”
etc.
What I know (so far) on this subject is from a great
documentary called Consuming Kids.
Basically, the overall idea of the film highlights how children are being
influenced (nowadays more than ever) to consume. The film supports this
assertion by showing and discussing all the different ways children are being
manipulated with detrimental marketing tactics and how advertisers employ child
psychologists’ to research children’s behavior, and video graph children around
the clock etc.
How would I respond to answering my research question right
now? I would simply state: marketing to preteens has become more pervasive and
sophisticated. Additionally, even defining this demographic market is
difficult. What I still need to do is research more. Such as, why are these
advertising methods harmful? Why should society care? How will this affect
future generations? What are the differences with past marketing strategies
versus current tactics? Why has this come to be? Is it because of deregulation and/or
shifting cultural values? Why do advertisers have more leeway today? What can
be done to change this? What are the solutions? And many more questions can be constructed.
I really enojy this topic and I was debating against myself if I should switch to this topic but I didnt want to steal your idea. You are on the right track about how advertisement provides a viewpoint that "i need this" but when you say that ads reflect current values I agree somewhat but I think it lines up with the same values but distorts it and manipulate it. They change the simple desire "i want to look pretty/good" to "I need to look pretty/good or I won't be accepted or liked." Good topic so far and I look forward to reading more about it.
ReplyDeleteAlso Try to find examples of 50's commercials aimed at children and see how completely different they are compared today.
Your topic is really interesting. Consumerism is such a large part of popular culture that advertisements really do play a strong role in shaping peoples’ opinions. I think you have a strong start, but you should really try to narrow down your research question. The individual questions within your responses seem like they can each begin new essays. For example, you could probably write your whole paper comparing and contrasting modern and past marketing tactics. Like how Raymond suggested, pick one decade to compare to today and see how things have changed.
ReplyDeleteI really like your research question. It’s true how advertisers brainwash children into thinking that they NEED something. It sounds like you have a lot of work but you know how you want to present your essay. The questions that you’re asking yourself are very good as they’ll add in-depth analysis of how advertisements target children.
ReplyDeleteI think this will be a really fun research paper to dive into. My only recommendation would be to make sure that you clearly define all of your terms including pre-teens, advertisement, consumerism, etc. It seems that you are arguing that one thing causes the other. The best way to make your paper strong would be to make sure that you isolate all possible variables to make your argument that much stronger. Good luck!
ReplyDeletei love this topic you have chosen. something you might want to take into consideration when writing this is the forms of new media that kids use today which provides them the access to come in contact with wanting these materialistic things. phones, laptops, tablets. children are more inclined to pick up a screen than to go outside. i think the introduction of any form of new media at a young age is where materialism plants its greedy little roots.
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