Jennifer Lehr Struggles with "the Nag Factor"

Image courtesy of SteveFE.

It's said by the time they're 2 or 3, children already demonstrate brand loyalty, and a significant knowledge of brands (even for products not targeted to them). Our children don't magically acquire this knowledge and preference; marketers spend billions of dollars targeting them (most recently about $17 billion), and encouraging what's been coined "the nag factor."

Parent and blogger Jennifer Lehr shares her own struggles with the nag factor in this wonderful recent post. Jennifer relates how a relative's trip to Disneyland resulted in Jennifer buying a Darth Vader mask for her own son, and how a trip to see Susan Linn speak helped Jennifer focus on just how slippery a slope this whole marketing-to-children-nag-factor thing is. (Susan is the author of Consuming Kids and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.)

Jennifer lists some of European Union's guidelines regarding children and advertising (there are several), and compares them to what's happening here in the U.S.  She says:

"Here in the U.S. we have no  such guidelines. Regulation, schemegulation. Here, it is up to us parents to micromanage everything they see and to just simply say no when they ask for everything under the sun.

'All of my friends have it!!!'

Who are we to go up against the carefully researched 'nag factor' combined with 17 billion dollars combined with smartphones and smartwatches and smartheadrests in the car and video billboards that means screens are everywhere our kids look.

No generation of parents, Susan explained, has ever had it so tough.

Are we just totally f*cked?

If it was only that our pocketbooks were being raided, that would be one thing. But something far more precious is being taken from our children when they truly believe that if they don’t have a particular toy or a particular character they will NEVER BE HAPPY. When they believe that pleasure comes from things, not from within us. They’re being sold a false promise of happiness.

And not only that!

Their natural desire for make believe play is being taken from them.  When children’s play is so deeply influenced by clearly defined characters that follow a specific story line, they’re not working through their own stuff, they are enacting someone else’s.

Read the complete post.

So what's Jennifer's solution? She says: "... I’ll still buy him stuff. But we can make stuff. And he can make stuff. And he can see his joy isn’t dependent on the shape of some plastic that is covering his head."

If you want more ideas for helping your children become compassionate, conscientious citizens who aren't dependent on stuff for their happiness, consider signing up for our online course for parents: Raising a Humane Child. The next session begins April 9. 

~ Marsha

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