How to Protect Your Child From Ads
When Cracker Jack decided to replace his “prize” with a QR code , it was ominous. Rather than finding a tiny baseball card or, in more recent years, less cool temporary tattoos, kids are now headed towards a mobile game that allows them to share their baseball-themed picture with the Cracker Jack logo with their friends with their friends. social media. Rest in peace, it is all pure. Will it ever be possible to shield kids from being tracked, analyzed, and bombarded with ads – and used as advertisements – if we can’t do it with a classic snack?
Unlikely. “I would say the only way to protect your child from ads is to keep them under the bed all day,” says Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of the upcoming book Be a Parent Please: Stop Banning Swing and Start Banning Snapchat . “Whether it’s television, video games or social media, everyone needs a piece of your child’s attention.”
Advertising for children is, of course, nothing new. (I still hum the tune “I’m stuck on a patch” every now and then.) But in the digital world, it gets more difficult as it appears under the guise of mobile games and “influencers” content, and the Internet doesn’t have the same FCC rules for dividing commercial and program content as TV networks and cable channels . You will now see Pokémon GO take the kids to Starbucks . Watch popular teen vlogger Baby Arieltaste Jelly Belly with her family. My 4-year-old daughter learned to hit the “Skip Ads” button before she could count to 20, but ads aren’t just in official commercials – they’re all over the place.
So what does this mean? As parents, do we have a choice about how much advertising our children are exposed to? We do.
What’s the matter?
Research shows that children react to ads differently than adults – for example, advertising junk food to them is dangerously effective . Children under the age of eight are especially vulnerable because they lack the cognitive skills to understand that what they are seeing is advertising. They unconditionally trust what they see and hear. In experiments with preschoolers, a Stanford University professor of childhood obesity and its relationship to screen time told the New York Times , “Even a 30-second exposure to a new product you’ve never seen before changes their brand preferences. … “
But companies aren’t going to wait for kids to get it.
Is subscription to services the answer?
A new report from Exstreamist , a news site dedicated to streaming services and the future of television, shows that children living in “Netflix-only” homes are “saved” 230 hours of commercials a year. More parents, including myself, are turning to subscription content providers, feeling that such services give them more control over what their children see. (And at a time when violent and disturbing YouTube videos are disguised as childish content , that control is critical.)
Pinna , the podcast subscription app for kids from the Panoply network, offers audiobooks and original programs for kids ages 4 to 12 to listen to and original programs to kids ages 4 to 12. It’s $ 7.99 per month (or $ 79.99 per year) and contains no ads. I tried it with a free trial and my 4 year old daughter enjoyed watching the show. (She especially enjoyed the quizzes at the end of the Sarah and Duck episodes.) Regarding forcing kids to advertise, Andy Bowers, Panoply’s director of content, told the New York Times , “I just think it’s a coercive action.”
Naomi Schaefer Riley tells me that most of the advertising for kids goes through free versions of games – Candy Crush, Subway Surfer, etc. costs, ”says Riley. “These games are clearly wasting time and diminishing attention, but at least if we force ourselves to pay for a game that has no ads, we can really think more about whether we really want our kids to waste time on them.” …
Without advertising, subscription-based services are certainly not a reliable solution. In response to a Netflix report, some Reddit users are predicting that if you remove ads, the content will become ads. “Can [children] recognize the placement of products in the programs themselves as advertising?” – thought the redditor misterchef78. “Having clear barriers between entertainment and advertising has helped consumers understand when they are being advertised.”
Plus, the fees for all of these subscriptions are increasing rapidly. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, HBO Now (where kids can stream every episode of Sesame Street) , and now everything Disney plans to launch is a lot. But the payback is some peace of mind.
‘A’ stands for advertising
As parents, we need to educate children about the difference between a program and a commercial so that they can start thinking critically for themselves. Common Sense Media offers several useful conversation starters. Sit down with your child and visit a website together, such as Crayola , and talk about how images, videos, and games make products look like what kids would like to buy. During a TV commercial, stop and ask your children, “What is this selling?” If your kids are older, you can give them permission to purchase apps – with limited funds, they’ll have to really consider value.
Apps like Kidoz, available on Android, put smartphones in a kid- friendly mode that prevents them from seeing irrelevant ads. Adguard AdBlocker blocks ads in Chrome. You can also create playlists of approved shows.
Then, of course, there is a big idea: reduce your screen usage time. Here are some ways to establish screen time rules that work for your family. (This process involves examining your own use of media.) There are all kinds of studies showing that children need more non-digital play time .
And keep talking. Continue to talk with other parents about how they manage ads. Keep talking to your child’s school administration about how they collect the data and where it goes . Keep talking to your legislators. And keep talking to your kids about what the world is trying to sell them.