Customer Reviews

Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture

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This book is an extended report on current marketing practices aimed at children and their results. The author begins by noting how marketing practices have changed over the last ten to fifteen years. In the 1970s and 1980s, when many of today's new parents were growing up, laws and industry practices provided some level of protection and privacy for children from the focus of marketing campaigns. Now, however, the gloves are off, and marketing firms shamelessly push everything from junk food to beer, cigarettes, cosmetics, and cars to `tweens, children between the ages of 6 and 12. Schor worked closely with marketing professionals while gathering information for this book so that she could obtain insider views. At the end of the book, Schor notes that these marketers generally feel horrible about what they do and the lengths they go to, but feel they have to continue in order to feed their own families.

The kinds of marketing practices that Schor describes in this book are shocking and outrageous. Many parents have heard of Channel One, an organization that puts TVs in schools for free, but parents may not be aware that in exchange for use of the equipment, administrators agree to force students to watch Channel One program complete with commercials while sitting in their seats and with the volume turned on. But force-feeding commercials to a captive audience of school kids is nothing compared to other current practices, such as having children conduct and even surreptitiously videotape focus-group data from friends at slumber parties that marketers pay them to organize. And then there are the "viral-marketing" campaigns, where kid leaders are sought out because other kids think they're cool, and then paid to convince other kids to buy merchandise, or when college kids are paid to sit in bars and pretend to be ordinary patrons while extolling the virtues of a company's alcoholic beverages.

Schor notes that there are now many ways in which marketing messages are delivered to kids. Kids are exposed to ads through viral-marketing, magazines, and radio. But television advertising seem to be especially hard for youngsters to understand and withstand. Marketers know that if they tell young kids that a product is fun or cool, the kids will pester their parents to get it, and they more the kids see the ads, the more persistent they will be with the pestering. Internet advertising is also a great problem for children, since young children have great difficulty recognizing which parts of the screen are filled with advertising and which parts with content. Marketers even embed Internet games with logos and ads, so that the ads are inseparable from the content.

One result of all this exposure to advertising is that kids these days are more heavily into consumerism than ever before. Schor cites a 1997 time use survey in which it was found that American children now spend, on average, two and a half hours each week shopping, which is twice as much time as they spend reading or going to church, and five times as much as they spend playing outdoors. They are extremely brand conscious with their clothing choices, even well before their teenage years. Schor attempted to find how down-shifting families dealt with all these commercial influences on their children, but found that it was extremely difficult to locate down-shifters with children- -apparently, having children in the house who are so exposed to marketing campaigns makes it difficult to avoid over-consumption.

To see how modern hyper-consumerism is affecting children, Schor conducted a research survey among kids in downtown and suburban Boston. She found that the marketing pitches are causing serious harm to children's well being. Advertisements for junk food, sweets, and soft drinks are feeding the obesity epidemic among our children, and the kids who watch the most TV are the ones getting the fattest. Heavy TV watchers also tend to have the greatest number of behavior problems, they have problems getting along with their parents, and they cannot seem to find satisfaction with life, no matter how much they buy. In contrast, in another study conducted by Thomas Robinson in San Jose, California, it was found that children whose TV watching was reduced also reduced their requests for products advertised on TV.

This book is clearly written and very well researched. Sources are cited through endnotes found at the back of the book (but not numbered explicitly in the main text). There is also an extensive bibliography and index. At times, the text can be rather heavy and overbearing, as Schor buries the reader in fact after depressing fact, so it's not exactly a fun book to read. Nevertheless, the material is extremely important for all of us, parents or not.

I'm a practicing child psychologist, and I have followed the media and their impact on children for a number of years. I found Dr. Schor's arguement accurate and convincing. I think the book is a must read for parents seriously concerned about the way big advertising is socializing their kids.

By the way, I recommended the book to my book club -- all men, mostly with children. Me, a child psychiatrist, a lawyer and a bunch of engineer types. Not a group for "chick books." We thought it was one of the best we've read in a couple of years.

It is no secret that children today wield more consumer power than ever, and that marketers have discovered them as one of the most profitable niches. But what is the real impact of all of this consumer attention on children?

In her latest book, renowned economist, consumer/family studies expert, and founding New American Dream Board Member Juliet B. Schor argues that this impact is detrimental, and something we ought to be paying much more attention to.

Says Schor, "We have become a nation that places a lower priority on teaching its children how to thrive socially, intellectually, even spiritually, than it does on training them to consume."

Indeed, her documentation of commercialization within schools is truly disturbing. And the results of a survey which Schor administered to a sampling of "tween"-aged children strongly indicate that heavy involvement in consumer culture jeopardizes children's well-being.

Ultimately, Schor argues that we need to take steps to decommercialize childhood, and she lays out several intriguing ideas for how to do so. Highly captivating and packed with vivid examples, this book should be required reading not only for parents but for anyone who cares about the future of our society.

There's not doubt that corporations, advertisers and marketers do not have your child's best interest at heart. Schor provides a comprehensive account of the what, why and how marketers are targeting your children.

Reading "Born to Buy" will make you want to throw out the TV, disconnect from the Internet, run to the country and home-school your children. Simply put, there's no way to avoid marketing techniques, and your child will succumb to the corporate-commercially constructed childhood. With all the doom and gloom in this book, Schor offers little hope of avoidance...in the end, she does provide a few solutions.

All in all, "Born to Buy" was very informative and an easy, entertaining read. However, some of Schor's original research and statistics caused me to get bogged down. I wasn't looking for scholarly research and did not need to see these statistics. Additionally, Schor seemed to use this book as a chance to take shots at the Bush administration. Although I'm not a fan of this administration and some of the criticism is valid, I do not think Bush started this problem...he's just done nothing to fix it.

All in all, this is well worth the read, especially if you have small children...just skip over the stats near the end, and forgive Schor's attempts at making this political.

I was a math teacher for 7 years and I ultimately quit the job never to return. I worked hard and was proud of what I accomplished but increasingly found myself powerless to really affect the lives of my students in a meaningful and helpful way. I became aware of a billion dollar goliath staring down into my face squashing my feeble attempts to educate these youths. I worked 50 to 60 hours a week, 12 hour days sometimes, and even put a minimum annual amount of $500 of my own money into buying necessary instructional materials. Yet, it wasn't enough. I was confused. I didn't understand why so many students had the money to buy expensive brand name jeans that were well over 100 dollars yet could not afford to bring a 10 cent pencil to class. Students had cell phones, designer clothes, and all sorts of goodies and yet were disrespectful to me, challenged my authority, or simply just ignored me. Some students even wondered why they were not paid to go to school.

Obviously, their priorities were not education. And where do these attitudes come from? Why is it that schools struggle to get the money they need having bake sales (or selling their souls to corporations) for school supplies and such? What is it? Politicians love to go on about "No Child Left Behind" and yet rob the poor with lotteries to offset state funds for education just so they can build more prisons, roads, or whatever it takes for them to get re-elected.

The answer is clear. The answer is in this book. Juliet B. Schor does an outstanding job shining the light of truth upon the real evil-doers in the world. And I state whole heartedly that any person who is willing to exploit a child for their own personal gain is indeed an evil-doer. Make no mistake! There is a billion dollar industry that is profiting from failing schools and the degradation of morals. This industry cares not if the child's priorities are Hum-Vee's and Rolex watches. They have no interest if this kid goes to school without a pencil. All they care about is sucking their coveted dollar from whatever kid they can!

I am sick and tired of it. I resent how Madison Avenue treats people. And I am disgusted with their exploitation of our young people. Whoever is engaged in this should be ashamed of themselves (if they even feel shame). I cannot imagine such people as even being human.

This is why I am so thankful for this book. And, this is why this book is so important. We need more books like this! We need more people seeing this sickness and we need more people willing to challenge Madison Avenue's stranglehold over the people.

I tip my hat to Juliet Schor and thank her for this fine work.

If you are interested in learning more about this than this is an outstanding source. I've also read her other books and I highly recommend them as well.

The influence of consumerism on my children has been a concern to me for a long time. From the moment I first held my son, I realized that I had a deep responsibility to raise him with strong values and the ability to reason through information presented to him, and I feel exactly the same way about my daughter. To me, modern consumerism is just a bunch of noise attempting to drown out this message, using any number of ploys to convince my children to not make well-reasoned decisions, particularly when it comes to material goods and money.

Born to Buy focuses in on those very issues. It's written by Juliet Schor, who also wrote The Overspent American, a book focusing on adults and consumerism that I reviewed a while back and quite enjoyed.

Much like Schor's earlier book, I found Born to Buy thoroughly well-researched and insightful, but did it really open my eyes to the relationship between consumer behavior and my children? Let's dig into the book and find out.

One quick general comment: this book is fact-packed and well researched. In fact, it's almost overwhelming and I found myself reading it in chunks and on occasion tracking down referenced source materials to find out more. To me, this is a good thing; to others, it may come off like drinking from a fire hose.

Introduction
The book opens with a historical perspective of the history of marketing, going back to the nascent days when children weren't marketed to at all, forward to the period between World War I and World War II where marketing for child-targeted products were pitched at the parents, on to today where most advertising is targeted at children in some way or another.

The Changing World of Children's Consumption
To be honest, I found this chapter depressing. It cites a huge number of studies to show that children are more involved in consumer-oriented decision making than ever before, but that's not led to a good result. Children often tie their own self worth to the material goods around them, to a level far unprecedented compared to previous generations of children. A majority of children in the United States are directly involved in the consumer decisions of the family (things like automobile purchases) and their sense of identity is somewhat based on the outcome of those decisions.

This leads to several things: children today are more likely to have emotional and mental disorders and are much more likely to be out of shape and overweight. The psychology of materialism and materialist values has negative effects on an adult mind, but on the mind of a child who has not yet learned many of the things adults take for granted, the effects of materialism can be tremendous - and feelings of insufficiency that are pervasive in modern marketing lead children to a negative self-image (that, of course, can only be pacified through more consumer goods).

From Tony the Tiger to Slime Time Live: The Content of Commercial Messages
Here, Schor focuses on the variety of themes found in commercial messages and, again, as a parent my stomach felt uncomfortable. Children's advertising focuses on a number of basic techniques: representing adults as repressive and "uncool" (something that can be battled with the latest consumer product), using older children as a sign that an item is "cool" (encouraging children to emulate older children rather than their peers), and various other techniques.

Schor goes into particular detail about Nickelodeon, the child-oriented television network, and why it is extremely effective at creating great marketing targeting children. The entire network encourages those themes - children are somehow more intuitive, intelligent, and "cool" than the adults and emulation of trends from older children (often an echoing of the marketing going on on MTV). These themes are pervasive throughout the programming, so when the ads appear espousing these same themes, the products are seen as much more acceptable and desirable - after all, wouldn't the kid in the television show also enjoy this product?

The Virus Unleashed: Ads Infiltrate Everyday Life
This chapter focuses primarily on detailing the marketing strategy behind a toy called P-O-X, which failed to take off in the marketplace in 2001 mostly due to bad timing connected to 9/11. The marketing methods involved with this toy were quite impressive. Perhaps most impressive was the use of "alpha children" to be marketers for the product - Hasbro actually gave the toy to children who were peer-identified as "cool" and paid them to give even more of them away to their friends.

What's the conclusion from this? Children can no longer trust normal methods of information. Marketers are quite willing to find every avenue imaginable to reach a child, and the methods that parents and children used to be able to rely on for unbiased information have become clouded. Thus, it's more important than ever to actually research a product and get multiple opinions on it than just trust what the "cool kid" says - he may actually be paid to say it.

Captive Audiences: The Commercialization of Public Schools
Marketing also filters heavily into the public school system, from things like Channel One to advertising messages slipped into the classroom content to school administrators directly allowing advertising in schools. School (at least public school) is not a safe haven from marketing - in fact, for many, school is a place where they are exposed to more marketing.

While I am aware that this goes on (I certainly was exposed to it in the mid 1990s in school), what bothers me more than anything is that the reason for most of these programs is inadequate government funding for education. I understand completely why schools have to do things like this - if you want your school to have revenue so they can afford modern textbooks, you may have to sell ad space, because the government certainly isn't stepping up to the plate.

Dissecting the Child Consumer: The New Intrusive Research
Why is marketing so effective? Here, Schor provides some big clues: there's some amazingly thorough research going on behind marketing. Schor relates the use of brain scans, home monitoring, videotaping and quantitative and qualitative analysis of child responses, and numerous other scientific analyses that are used solely to develop better models for convincing children to want products.

It's no wonder that children are so susceptible to marketing. The marketing models developed by these organizations are incredibly well conceived, detailed, and are targeted towards the specific psychological areas where children are weakest. Ads hone in on areas of insecurity, triggering them in whatever way is needed to evoke a positive response toward the product and encourage more sales.

Habit Formation: Selling Kids on Junk Food, Drugs, and Violence
Even more disturbing, many of these techniques mix thoroughly with elements that are simply not good for children, things like drugs, violence, and junk food. Junk food, tobacco, and alcohol advertisements directly target children, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. These ads intend to plant the idea of the product in the minds of the children so they will not only desire the product themselves, but encourage their parents to purchase it.

Even violence is marketed, through games like Grand Theft Auto and violent films. Even though I have no problem with these products existing, I am bothered by the fact that many of them are marketed directly towards children. I have no reason to believe my children will not make sound moral choices in their lives, but that also doesn't mean that an eight year old child should enjoy shooting realistic depictions of people as a pastime.

How Consumer Culture Undermines Children's Well-Being
What does all of this culminate with? Since many forms of media are designed by marketers to have psychological hooks into the minds of children, many children wind up addicted to media, addicted to consumerism, and prone to emulating the behavior that they see. Schor goes through a mountain of data outlining this, and the results aren't pretty.

Exposure to consumer culture is directly related to a greater tendencies to lie, to cheat, to steal, to be overweight, to reject parental authority and guidance, to be violent, and to exhibit signs of greediness. Why? All of these psychological hooks within marketing push children down this avenue. They come to believe that they need the products, and they're shown that antisocial behaviors are often the best way to get them.

Empowered or Seduced? The Debate About Advertising and Marketing to Kids
Who's to blame for the pervasiveness of marketing? The obvious answer is to point the finger at the marketers, but that's not exactly the entire picture, either.

In many cases, parents are to blame in that they allow media to become a surrogate parent. When you find it "easier" to plop your child in front of a television for a few hours so you can do something else, it's not a healthy situation. Similarly, when you can't (or don't) rationally discuss consumer purchases with your child, that creates problems as well, and when you exhibit consumer-oriented behavior (lusting after items), you teach your child that such behavior is good.

Society as a whole is somewhat to blame as well. We've de-focused from adequate education funding, requiring schools to allow marketers in to be able to afford good educational materials.

Decommercializing Childhood: Beyond Big Bird, Bratz Dools, and the Back Street Boys
So how can one opt out of this trap. Schor offers a lot of guidance in this closing chapter, so I tried to boil it down to several points that can be taken away.

First, parents need to create rules about television and stick to them. Limit the amount of time your child can watch television each day. In fact, at our house, we're getting very close to abandoning the television altogether, leaving just a DVD player to watch films and programs without commercials and a game console (the sole thing keeping us from this is the difficulty in watching live events).

Second, parents should walk the walk as well. If you restrict the television your children watch, you should restrict the amount you watch as well.

Third, parents should limit their child's exposure to junk foods. Learn how to cook at home and avoid the garbage. A piece of candy once in a while is fine, but Mickey D's every other day is a very bad thing.

Fourth, parents should discuss these issues with the parents of their child's friends. Let them know that you don't want your children watching a ton of television if you feel strongly about it. Perhaps you can find parents who feel much the same way as you do.

Finally, and this is the most important thing you can possibly do, spend more time with your kids away from media. Participate in sports with them. Read with them. Play board games with them. Talk to them. Do projects with them. Anything that you can do with your child in a non-marketed situation is a good thing and it will reap great benefits for you and your child.

Buy or Don't Buy?
If you have children and can tolerate reading that is a bit dry in a few places, Born to Buy is a must-read. It demonstrates in a clear, fact-based manner the diversity of ways that advertisements and consumer behavior influences your child in profound ways, for better and for worse, and it provides a lot of great advice for parents concerned about these issues.

The book was quite dense, but it was incredibly thought provoking for me as a parent and as a consumer. I'll admit that since I've read this book, I have witnessed many of the things discussed in the book - and they deeply bother me. In fact, this book made me inch ever closer to a completely television-free home.

First of all, this is a very good book. I feel like this review is going to come off as critical, but overall, the message is great.

This book was published in 2004. But it seems like most of the research cited throughout the bulk of the book was done during the mid 1990s. This makes the information feel extremely old when I'm reading about it in 2010. This doesn't necessarily make the information bad or wrong or out of date. My guess is that many of the findings from 20 years ago would still be true today, however, the book doesn't seem to have aged very well.

The author does a good job of tying advertising to kids eating more junk food. She also works hard to show that increased media consumption leads to worse relationships with parents and even poor health outcomes - from obesity to depression. However, most of the ties that are formed are based on her own study. I also felt that her study, although statistically significant, was too narrow. It was based on only 300 children, limited in age, and all from the Boston area. I'm hesitant to extrapolate every finding to the entire population.

All that being said, the overall, general message is clear, and I believe sound: The overexposure of children to media, advertising and big business is not good for them.

The solutions to this problem are not clear. Big business and ads are everywhere. The pressures are enormous, and the budgets used by the corporations for advertising to kids are gigantic. How do you limit the amount of exposure that your children have? Shutting off the TV is a great first step, but it's impossible to keep all ads away from their eyes and ears. Never listening to the radio in car? "Close your eyes, kids, here come some billboards!" It's a challenge for all parents everywhere. This book does a great job at raising parental awareness to what you're actually fighting against.

Julie B. Schor's Born to Buy offers an in-depth examination of the way marketers target minors. (Inexplicably, between hardback and soft cover it lost its subtitle: "The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture.") Some of it was enlightening; some of it was shocking; most of it was convincing; all of it was pretty interesting. Schor may be a bit too speculative about the impact of commercialization from time to time, but even so she has the potential to spark dialogue, which is something society sorely needs in respect to the way we're brainwashing our children. I live in a consumer-savvy household. I've been educating my son since he was old enough to watch commercial television about the aims of marketers and the ways commercials mislead you. Even so he's a patsy for every slick snake-oil salesman that comes along. And it is disturbing that while I myself choose what to expose him to on television and in magazines that he reads at home, he might be forced to sit through advertisements in his classroom with no one to offer a balanced perspective on advertiser claims. The halls of junior academia should most decidedly be safe zones, and commercial enterprises should not be allowed to bribe our educators into subverting the public trust. Anyway, enough with my soap box. Schor is better positioned on hers.

I'd give this one 4.5 stars if Amazon would let me. Since it won't, I'll overlook what I perceive as minor weaknesses because they have little impact to the overall appeal and influence of the work.

Advertising is creepy, advertising to children even creepier. This is not news. But a detailed study of the overall effects is. The bulk of this book presents the results of in-depth study of the industry, both through statistical study of two sample groups of children, and through study of the work environments of the advertisers themselves, with interviews of marketers, parents, teachers, and kids. The author takes into account the history of moral panics, the party line of the industry that "kids are savvy," and the specific work that has been done around small aspects of this issue, such as fast food and violent video games (which I love). The author takes an unusually balanced, non-partisan view, sympathizing with the easily-vilified advertisers she worked closely with as well as kids and parents. Her policy recommendations are unlikely to be implemented, but her analysis of the issue is extremely sharp.

Well researched and horrifying, it's all true. You may want to pick up a book on homeschooling your children along side this book, as you will undoubtably want to purchase one afterwards, and if you purchase both at once, you will qualify for free super savings shipping.