Research among adults suggests that materialism and life satisfaction negatively influence each other, causing a downward spiral. So far, cross-sectional research among children has indicated that ...materialistic children are less happy, but causality remains uncertain. This study adds to the literature by investigating the longitudinal relation between materialism and life satisfaction. We also investigated whether their relation depended on children's level of exposure to advertising.
A sample of 466 children (aged 8-11; 55% girls) participated in a 2-wave online survey with a 1-year interval. We asked children questions about material possessions, life satisfaction, and advertising. We used structural equation modeling to study the relationship between these variables.
For the children in our sample, no effect of materialism on life satisfaction was observed. However, life satisfaction did have a negative effect on materialism. Exposure to advertising facilitated this effect: We only found an effect of life satisfaction on materialism for children who were frequently exposed to advertising.
Among 8- to 11-year-old children, life satisfaction leads to decreased materialism and not the other way around. However, this effect only holds for children who are frequently exposed to television advertising. It is plausible that the material values portrayed in advertising teach children that material possessions are a way to cope with decreased life satisfaction. It is important to reduce this effect, because findings among adults suggest that materialistic children may become less happy later in life. Various intervention strategies are discussed.
Throughout history, the responsibility for children's moral well-being has fallen into the laps of mothers. In 'The Moral Project of Childhood', the noted childhood studies scholar Daniel Thomas Cook ...illustrates how mothers in the nineteenth-century United States meticulously managed their children's needs and wants, pleasures and pains, through the material world so as to produce the 'child' as a moral project. Drawing on a century of religiously-oriented child care advice in women's periodicals, he examines how children ultimately came to be understood by mothers - and later, by commercial actors - as consumers.
In today's society, children are surrounded by advertising. Within this context, this paper presents a set of activities designed to make children aware of various marketing tactics, mainly related ...to advertising, so that they become empowered to make informed consumer choices. The design of the intervention and the evaluation of its effectiveness make a number of contributions to current research. Firstly, teachers carried out the activities, a role traditionally assigned to parents or researchers in previous literature. Secondly, we broaden the scope of indicators measuring the effectiveness of the activities by including the evaluation of changes not only in advertising literacy, but also in attitudes towards advertising and in children's behaviours. Results show the effectiveness of the intervention in preparing children to better deal with advertising. Suggestions for further research and the design of this type of interventions are presented.
OBJECTIVES:This study examines the effects of branding and packaging on young children's taste preferences.
METHODS:Preschool children aged 3 to 5 (n=65) tasted five pairs of identical foods in ...packaging from McDonald's and in matched packaging that was either plain, Starbucks-branded, or colourful (but unbranded). Children were asked if the foods tasted the same or if one tasted better.
RESULTS:Children preferred the taste of foods wrapped in decorative wrappings, relying more on aesthetics than on familiar branding when making their choices.
CONCLUSIONS:The findings suggest the need to explore questions beyond commercial advertising (and brand promotion) on television and other media platforms. More attention should be directed at the important role of packaging in directing children's food preferences.
Children's exposure to food marketing has exploded in recent years, along with rates of obesity and overweight. Children of color and low‐income children are disproportionately at risk for both ...marketing exposure and becoming overweight.Comprehensive reviews of the literature show that advertising is effective in changing children's food preferences and diets.This paper surveys the scope and scale of current marketing practices, and focuses on the growing use of symbolic appeals that are central in food brands to themes such as finding an identity and feeling powerful and in control.These themes are so potent because they are central to children in their development and constitution of self. The paper concludes that reduction of exposure to marketing will be a central part of any successfu anti‐obesity strategy.
Purpose
– This study aims to examine aspects of children’s sustainability socialization. Many studies examine children’s attitudes to sustainability. However, few studies build an understanding of ...how, where and when children are socialized to sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
– Interviews with 30 children explore the socializing agents (who), learning situations (where), learning processes (how) and learning effects (what). The study also delineates and compares the environmental, self and social dimensions of sustainability.
Findings
– Socialization to environmental sustainability is highly structured and formal, and children rarely go beyond the knowledge and actions they are taught. Socialization to the self dimension combines formal and informal mechanisms with a greater propensity for elaboration and generalization. Meanwhile, socialization to societal sustainability involves unstructured and individualized processes and outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
– This is an exploratory study. Future research could develop scales to measure children’s sustainability dispositions and actions. Researchers could then use such scales to examine the sustainability socialization of children from other demographic and cultural groups.
Practical implications
– The findings indicate that children are often positively disposed towards sustainability but lack the knowledge and direction needed to exercise this desire. Thus, marketers should more clearly articulate how their product solves a sustainability problem.
Social implications
– This paper could inform sustainability education policy. It has practical applications in the area of sustainability curriculum design in schools.
Originality/value
– Being the first study that explores children’s socialization to three dimensions of sustainability, this paper provides a unique contribution to consumer behaviour theory and would be of interest to academics, practitioners and social marketers.
This study examines parental mediation of preschool children's television viewing. Becker's (1981) theory of parent-child relations is used to frame mediation in terms of parenting resources. A ...survey of 129 parents of preschool children (ages 1-5) reveals that when resources are in highest demand, attitudes toward television are a factor in deciding whether television mediation will benefit children. Demographic variables, parents' attitudes about television, and parents' involvement with children all significantly predicted restrictive and instructive mediation. The findings are discussed in light of young Children's needs for mediation as a guide to television's novel set of technical and cultural codes.
Introducing the Issue Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne; Donahue, Elisabeth Hirschhorn
The Future of children,
03/2008, Letnik:
18, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
To address questions raised by the proliferation of new electronic media, we invited a panel of experts to review the best available evidence on whether and how exposure to different media forms is ...linked with such aspects of child well-being as school achievement, cognition, engagement in extracurricular activities, social interaction with peers and family, aggression, fear and anxiety, risky behaviors, and healthy lifestyle choices. Because how children fare in each of these areas is influenced by multiple forms of media and even by interactions between different media, we organized the volume by children's outcomes rather than by media platforms. ...we asked the authors to pay special attention to the quality of the studies on which their conclusions are based.
Little is known about the influence of advertising on very young children. We, therefore, measured product logo recognition by subjects aged 3 to 6 years.
Children were instructed to match logos with ...one of 12 products pictured on a game board. Twenty-two logos were tested, including those representing children's products, adult products, and those for two popular cigarette brands (Camel and Marlboro).
Preschools in Augusta and Atlanta, Ga.
A convenience sample of 229 children attending preschool.
The children demonstrated high rates of logo recognition. When analyzed by product category, the level of recognition of cigarette logos was intermediate between children's and adult products. The recognition rates of The Disney Channel logo and Old Joe (the cartoon character promoting Camel cigarettes) were highest in their respective product categories. Recognition rates increased with age. Approximately 30% of 3-year-old children correctly matched Old Joe with a picture of a cigarette compared with 91.3% of 6-year-old children.
Very young children see, understand, and remember advertising. Given the serious health consequences of smoking, the exposure of children to environmental tobacco advertising may represent an important health risk and should be studied further.
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