Overview of the Commercialization of Childhood

Susan Linn, Ed.D.

Children stand at the center of an unprecedented maelstrom of marketing that undermines all aspects of their lives. The landscape of advertising and promoting to kids today is unlike the television commercials you and I experienced as children. It is enhanced by technology, honed by child psychologists, and brought to us by billions of dollars.

Electronic media has transformed how children spend their time and the commercialization of childhood can only be understood in that context (Levin & Linn, 2003). The average child in the United States spends almost 40 hours a week engaged with media outside of school (Roberts, et al, 1999), most of which is commercially based. Children spend more time in front of a screen than they spend doing anything other than sleeping. And much of this time is without adult supervision: 32% of children 2 to 7 have televisions in their rooms, as do 65% of children 8 to 18 (Roberts, et al, 1999). Children see about 40,000 commercials a year on television alone (Kunkel, 2001). And as Internet access increases, so does children’s exposure to marketing. According to Business Week, in 2001 only 2 percent of the millions of websites designed for children were free of commercials (Neuborne, 2001).

As consumers, children are big business. In 2000, corporations spent over 12 billion dollars marketing to kids. That’s about double what was spent in 1992 (Lauro, 1999). Along with toys, ads for food high in fat, sugar and calories account for most of the marketing that targets children (Kotz & Story, 1994; Williams, et al, 1993). In 2000, Burger King spent $80 million on advertising to children (Cebrynski & Zuber, 2001) even as Quaker Oats spent $15 million just to pitch Cap’n Crunch cereal (Thompson, 1999). 

Promotions linking toys, media and fast food are another pervasive form of advertising. Once a movie or TV program is associated with a product, the program itself becomes an ad for that brand. Characters from Nickelodeon’s hit program Rugrats now grace packages of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, as well as Farley’s Fruit Rolls, and a Good Humor ice cream sandwich. Kraft’s best selling pasta brand is SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni & Cheese, based on another Nickelodeon program (Day, 2003).

Tie-ins like these are lucrative. But are tie-ins good for children? They are designed to lure kids into selecting food, toys and clothing based on favorite movie or TV characters and, in the words of one marketing expert, “to establish a situation where kids are exposed to their brand in as many different places as possible throughout the course of the day ... or almost anywhere they turn in the course of their daily rituals.” (Kjos, 2002). Nor is public television the commercial-free haven it once was. Programs such as Teletubbies and Clifford the Big Red Dog engage in promotions with fast food companies while Arthur the aardvark and Sesame Street characters grace packages of juice.

Children are not even free from commercial advertising when they play. Last year, nine of the ten best selling toys were media linked (Play Date, 2002). Toy companies partner with food companies to create what I call “advertoys” such as Barbie’s Fun Time McDonald’s and Hot Wheel’s miniature trucks and cars featuring M&Ms.

This year, 4Kids entertainment, the distributors of Pokemon, has entered into a four year $100 billion deal with Fox to create programming based on their products for Saturday morning television. In other words, Saturday morning on Fox will be one long commercial.

Children today are also subjected to product placement–where products are inserted into the plot or setting of programs. For instance, Disney’s popular movie Spy Kids contains a scene featuring food from McDonald’s. Even live sports events include product placement. After each at-bat during baseball’s 2002 All Star Home Run Derby, viewers were treated to repeated closeups of athletes quenching their thirst with bottles of Gatorade.

On the Web, product placement is called “immersive advertising.” Because immersion advertising does not require children twelve and under to provide personal information, it is legal and does not violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Yet it exposes children to advertising that is unidentified and embedded in the content of their online activities.

When children approach adolescence, they are targets for a recently developed practice called word-of-mouth – or “viral” – marketing (Siegel, et al, 2002). This approach relies on sending marketers out into a community to identify the most popular children. These kids are given free products to distribute; in this way, the product is identified as “cool” and becomes attractive to the less popular children who also want to be “cool.” (Levin & Linn, 2003).