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It's All About Profit: Exploiting Kids for Cash

Aug 27, 2004
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It's All About Profit: Exploiting Kids for Cash

BreakPoint with Charles Colson

Commentary #040827 - 08/27/2004

It's All About Profit: Exploiting Kids for Cash

The story got only a brief mention in the NEW YORK TIMES -- a three-paragraph

article buried on an inside page. To me, it's a big story -- and a disturbing

one.

The article reported, "Magazines popular with teenagers like PEOPLE, ROLLING

STONE, and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED tend to have more advertisements for liquor and

beer than other magazines, and that suggests that the alcohol industry may be

indirectly appealing to under-age drinkers." A study published in the JOURNAL OF

THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION showed that "for every million more readers

ages 12 to 19, a magazine had 60 percent more advertisements for beer and

distilled liquor."

I don't think it's a question of "indirectly" appealing to underage drinkers at

all. I think the alcohol industry knows exactly what it's doing -- just like the

cigarette industry did with its now infamous "Joe Camel" image. Problem drinkers

don't usually start in middle age. It's when you get a kid hooked at age sixteen

that you've got him for life. And it's easier to get him hooked at an age when

his paramount concern is to be "cool," to fit in with everyone else. In their

relentless drive for more and more profits, both the alcohol industry and the

magazine industry have completely forgotten their responsibility to society and

to children.

Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that it's received so little

attention. In an interview with PBS's FRONTLINE a couple of years ago, Professor

Mark Crispin Miller observed, "In a thoroughly commercialized environment, there

is very little incentive to be careful of the sensibilities of particular

segments of the audience. Thirty years ago, a certain kind of commercial

approach to children would have been unthinkable . . . [But] we're all far more

jaded about advertising than we used to be . . . So [advertisers] tend to do

things that are more outrageous than anything they would have tried thirty years

ago."

We're so "thoroughly commercialized" -- so caught up in materialism -- that

we've forgotten that the most basic human instinct is to protect and guide our

children. Greed seems to control the conversation, and even parents don't weigh

in on behalf of their kids.

Well, you and I are not going to prevent magazines from printing beer and liquor

ads or from using sex to sell beer, liquor, and just about anything else. And,

since the ads are on billboards as well, we're not going to be able to prevent

our kids from seeing them.

We can, however, prepare our kids by helping them understand the worldview that

underlies most advertising. It's a materialistic worldview that's selling

hedonism. The company that makes the advertised product just wants our money and

is willing to promise us just about any pleasure in order to get it.

There was a time when advertisers yielded to the opinions of parents, but no

longer. Since kids have money, kids are the market, and the opinions of parents

are less important.

This makes it all the more urgent to talk with your kids about advertising and

the worldview behind it and to warn them where this kind of exploitation can

lead. The really "cool" answer is to see through this advertising blitz and just

say "no."

Originally published August 27, 2004.

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