Fake Cards, Real Worries: Harmful Or Educational? Use Of Play Plastic In Game Of Life Divides Experts
By Kathleen Megan
The Courant
October 4, 2007
If the thought of
your child using a Visa card - fake though it might be -
while playing a board game seems a bit unsettling, you're
not alone.
Recently, the Game of Life issued a new "Twists and Turns"
version that comes with a play Visa card and an electronic
"pod" that it slips into for storage of a player's
financial data. Last year, Monopoly came out with its
"Here & Now" version of the more than 70-year-old game
that features a credit card with no brand name.
Also found along the toy aisles are plastic debit and
credit cards, though unbranded, to be used with toy cash
registers and shopping carts, along with a Barbie "fashion
fever" shopping play set that comes with a credit card.
While there can
be no argument that plastic has replaced cash as the
preferred means of payment for almost anything more than
about $20, not everyone is eager to have kids imitating
this adult behavior, particularly when the credit card
carries a brand name.
So what do experts have to say to parents who may be
wondering about this as the holiday shopping season
approaches?
"I think it's a great deal for Visa, and it's a lousy deal
for children, especially when credit card debt is a major
problem in the country," said Susan Linn, director of the
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. (About 70
percent of young adults in their 20s have credit cards
with the average balance of debt at $4,929, according to a
Northbrook, Ill., research company called Tru.)
"The idea of branding younger children with a credit card
and a particular credit card is troubling," said Linn.
Visa is banking on kids having "warm, fuzzy feelings"
about Visa, she said, and on them nagging their parents to
use Visa.
Both Visa and Hasbro insist this isn't the case and that
their intent is only educational. Jason Alderman of Visa
said that no money changed hands and that Hasbro
approached Visa on the subject.
"We don't market to kids. We never have, we never will,"
said Alderman. Rather, he said, Visa saw this as an
opportunity to promote financial education.
Noting that the game comes with a booklet and cards with
real-life tips on handling money, Alderman said, "Lots of
the materials are designed with parents in mind, with the
idea of using the materials as conversation starters."
Pat Riso, spokesman for Hasbro Games, said the new Life
game was already created when someone in marketing met up
with someone from Visa and got to thinking about Visa's
"Life Takes Visa" campaign and how it might be interesting
if "our game of Life really did take Visa."
"It was a way to further contemporize the game for us,"
said Riso, who noted that the traditional versions of Life
and Monopoly are still on the shelves.
Linn said Visa's claim that this is a way of teaching
money management to kids "flies in the face of everything
we know about young children and child development."
"Children are concrete thinkers - they need to be abstract
thinkers to use credit cards successfully," said Linn.
"The way for children to learn to use money is by using
money: real cash."
Games with play money that have kids spend and make change
do help children with money management, she said.
Stephanie Oppenheim, co-founder of the Oppenheim Toy
Portfolio, an independent guide to toys, agrees.
Having the electronic tabulating system takes the math out
of the games, said Oppenheim, "which is what's so valuable
about it for kids."
"Most young children don't understand that a credit card
means that you have to pay," she said. "If you ask most 7-
and 8-year-olds, they think of a credit card as a magic
card that you whip out and buy things with."
Thomas Schneider, a financial consultant in Farmington,
said he can understand the critics' concerns about
replacing play cash with play credit cards.
"As a parent, I can understand the mind-set," he said,
"but as a financial planner, my head says that's the norm:
That's where life is going. Everything is plastic."
Parents should educate kids about finances, whether it's
cash or credit, he said, and these games offer that
chance.
But all of this debate on the pros and cons of cash or
credit in board games is beside the point, according to
George Scarlett, deputy chairman of child development at
Tufts University. "It makes me laugh the concerns people
have about the content of children's play," said Scarlett.
"I get it all the time: People are concerned about war
play, sexist play ... "
Children's play, he said, is much more about "the passion
they bring to it and the structural development of play"
than it is about the particular items they are playing
with.
In Monopoly, he said, the developmental achievement is
working together to have a satisfying, competitive game,
where kids get along through the wins and losses.
"Whether it's credit cards or Monopoly dollars is
irrelevant," said Scarlett. "What really matters is
whether the play itself is passionate."
To think that playing with a toy credit card at age 8 will
somehow lead to misuse of credit cards as an adult is "a
kind of voodoo magic kind of thinking," said Scarlett.
The introduction of a Visa card to the Game of Life is
"just another instance of us being bombarded by
advertising," said Scarlett.
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