Barraged By Ads, Children Need To Be Media Savvy

7-23-97
University Park, Pa. -- In a society saturated with Barbie dolls and McDonald's Happy Meals, it is essential for parents to teach children how to translate media messages and become educated consumers.

"Corporations such as Mattel, McDonald's and Disney do not set out deliberately to drive parents crazy or manipulate children. Their intention is simply to make lots of money," says Dr. Shirley R. Steinberg, who recently received her doctorate from Penn State.

Advertising to young people grew 50 percent to $1.5 billion between 1993 and 1996 alone, according to Competitive Media Reporting. The reason is not hard to find; this year, children 14 and under are expected to spend $20 billion and influence the spending of another $200 billion.

"Furthermore, corporate giants such as Mattel, Hasbro, Nike and Disney operate with cultural assumptions and biases, even if these are not expressed in political terms," Steinberg notes. "This explains why Barbie projects a certain standard of acceptability for women. The classic Barbie is anorexic, long-legged, blond, affluent and equipped with designer jeans."

Steinberg is author of the article, "The Bitch Who Has Everything," which appeared in the recently published book, "Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction Of Childhood" (Westview Press), edited by Steinberg and Dr. Joe L. Kincheloe, professor of cultural studies and pedagogy in Penn State's College of Education.

At the same time it promotes Barbie, the media also hypes a cultural backlash against Barbie, with "heroic chic" ads of women that look like drug

addicts: pale, sad, exhausted. Steinberg sees the so-called "Gothic kids," with their pierced navels, spiked hair and drab clothes, as rebels against the bourgeois Barbie.

"In their own way, however, the 'Gothic kids' are as captive to the media as their peers who buy designer jeans and Barbie doll sets," Steinberg says. "Even while they assume a posture of protest, they are still capitalists. They still buy, buy, buy."

Parents and schools cannot protect children totally from this media barrage, says Steinberg. Censoring all the different media messages is impossible.

"What we can do is have intelligent discussions with our children about `kinderculture' and help them decode media messages being sent out by corporations," Steinberg notes. "Thus, media literacy becomes not some rarefied add-on to a traditional curriculum but a basic skill necessary to help children decipher and manage media messages from the great corporate advertisers: Mattel, Disney, Hasbro, Walmart, Pepsi, Nike and the others."

"Academics who stress media literacy are not ideologues with an attitude," Steinberg adds. "We just want to have informed kids.
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EDITORS: Dr. Steinberg can be contacted at (814) 238-7663 (home) or at jlk14@psu.edu by email.

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Contacts:
Paul Blaum (814) 865-9481 (office) pab15@psu.edu
Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (office) vyf1@psu.edu