Conspicuous Little Consumers

Juliet Schor's latest book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, represents the culmination of many things: her training as an economist and sociologist, her ongoing analysis of consumer culture in previous books (The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer), and her own experience as a mother.

Born to Buy examines the increased involvement of children in consumer culture, specifically as targets of advertising, and the resulting effect on their well-being. Schor balances her well-researched presentation of rather alarming data with a voice that is not alarmist, but practical, informative, and readable.

In many ways her conclusion comes as no surprise. Readers may be surprised, however, by her data -- namely, the sheer volume of marketing to which children are exposed. According to Schor, the advertising industry spent $100 million on marketing to children in 1983; by 2004 that amount had increased to $15 billion. Advertisements saturate television, radio, and print media. More disturbing, however, is the extent to which marketers have infiltrated schools, the Internet, airplanes, restrooms, and essentially every other public space available.

These ads are the product of some of the finest anthropological research and creative thinking in the marketing business. Techniques such as anti-adultism, which pits children against adults in the struggle for marketed goods, and age compression, which targets children of younger and younger ages, combine with all the traditionally manipulative advertising techniques to create a culture in which children do not merely consume, but also find their identity in consumption.

The effect on children's psychological, physical, and social health is, predictably, deplorable. Schor notes the dramatic increase in incidences of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, obesity, and psychosomatic disorders.

With their characteristically underestimated precociousness, children are not wholly unaware of this trend. Before I spoke with Juliet Schor, I ate lunch with children at the school where I teach. I explained to them that I was interviewing a woman who had written a book saying that children today saw more commercials than ever before. I asked them if they thought it was true.

"Well, yeah," they shrugged. "They're everywhere on the television and the computer." They went back to their lunch: chips in flashy containers, yogurt with movie characters on the package, and sweets upon sweets.

What is it, compared to children's advertising in the past or to adult advertising, that makes marketing to children so dangerous now?

Juliet Schor: Well, there's the volume. The sort or extent of media and ad exposure has increased enormously, along with the amount of stuff that kids have. It's taking over a greater and greater volume of kids' time use, activities, mental space, and physical space. It's the shift towards getting into very basic processes of identity and social connection and esteem, which is new.

Who is responsible for regulating this marketing phenomenon?

A lot depends on the ad. If it's going on television, the network has an office within it. There's a so-called self-regulation, a set of industry guidelines that companies say they adhere to, but in fact compliance is not that great and there's a very limited apparatus for enforcement of those guidelines. In any case, they're not binding.

I saw a study from the CARU, Children's Advertising Review Unit, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, showing that CARU claims they have 97 percent compliance, which is bogus. There are no penalties for not complying, the companies say they're complying and they're not. Sham may be too strong a word, but there are some sham aspects to it, particularly recently when you've had a lot of changing practices and a lot of competition in the industry. Television ads are the most regulated part of [children's advertising]. When you start getting out of TV, although CARU is nominally covering it, it has a small staff, and the volume of kids' ads is enormous. They basically are reacting to complaints that are brought to them. But there are not that many complaints because there's no formal body that's reviewing all these ads.