10 ms·

It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is he

by medler 3y ago

It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous and I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the consensus opinion.

baggachipz 3y ago
> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Religion has entered the chat.
- afavour 3y ago
  The idea is to improve, not replicate all the bad parts.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  > Religion has entered the chat. Parenting in general has entered the cat. (That said, I do agree that we need boundaries on the manipulation of younger minds. I've seen others make this analogy before: We don't let kids buy cigarettes in stores -- why should they have the full force of addictive algorithmic social media unleashed on them? [for that matter, why should adults, but that's another story])
- skizm 3y ago
  I'm no fan of organized Religion, but I think there is a clear distinction here. Religion is opt-in (by the parents) where most advertising to kids isn't. You could argue that parents could take away their access to [phone|youtube|instagram|etc.], but kids will get access at school, or through their friends one way or another. The internet is too ubiquitous at this point to actually opt-out.
  - p0pcult 3y ago
    You shouldn't be allowed to opt others in, especially those under the age of legally informed consent, to brainwashing.
    - Lord_Baltimore 3y ago
      Yeah, I don't think you should be able to opt children into atheistic teaching.
      - govg 3y ago
        Atheism isn't a belief system predicated on the existence of supernatural forces for whom we have no evidence. Wouldn't call it brainwashing.
      - mftrhu 3y ago
        You can't opt in to "atheistic teaching", it's simply the result of not opting in to any of the religious options.
        p0pcult 3y ago
        You probably can indoctrinate someone with atheism, but it is, as you say, alao a potential outcome of rejecting the other options.
      - callalex 3y ago
        Can you define “atheistic teaching”?
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Religion isn't opt-in where I live, it's a mandatory part of the school system for every student of any background, students can only opt out once they are 18 and basically finished with school anyway. I'd understand if it was some ethics class that in part educates about religion, but in elementary to middle school it's 100% Jesus and angel stories. Separation of church and state my ass.
nightowl_games 3y ago
"Deliberately manipulating" is a biased term that negatively taints your statement. With the bias removed, the statement's ambiguity is revealed. You must unpack what you mean by "deliberately manipulating". For example, teaching and parenting is a form of deliberately manipulating. Picking my kid up when he's about to fall down a slide is deliberately manipulating. Handing him a banana is deliberately manipulating. We are deliberately manipulating children constantly and for critically good reasons.
- medler 3y ago
  You have a good point. I really meant deliberately manipulating with the intent of making them want to buy things, and especially manipulating their emotions to make them think their lives will be so much better if only they had the product being advertised, which is exactly what advertising aimed at kids tries to do
- Devasta 3y ago
  Caffeine is a drug, but when someone says "I don't want my kids doing drugs" we all know they aren't talking about Dr. Pepper. You knew exactly what they meant, why pretend otherwise?
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - nightowl_games 3y ago
    Upon a second reading I can see more specificity due to the focus on "advertising". I still think that unpacking what is good and what is bad advertising is a difficult line to draw. Statements like "manipulating children is bad" are kinda worthless statements. They are simply inflammatory. We need to speak more precisely and with more clarity in order to elevate each other's understanding. We cannot simply make simple statements for decades and expect things to progress in any meaningful way. The conversation itself needs to change.
- Taywee 3y ago
ryoshu 3y ago
I really hated growing up with Transformers and He-Man and all of the other TV shows that were animated versions of toys I played with. Wait. I didn't hate that at all.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I noticed a Youtube ad on a kids video was literally a 44 minute Transformer cartoon. If you didn't hit skip, it would play for 44 minutes. Not sure what I feel about it.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    In the 80s and 90s there were multi-hour long blocks of toy ads disguised as cartoons. That’s all Transformers and He-Man ever were.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I love the Cheat Commandos parodies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4Od4Bl7cE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4Od4Bl7cE I still feel a bit different about cartoons that were toy ads vs pure toy ad, somehow.
  - smolder 3y ago
    How is that possible? Don't long ads cost the advertiser more? It doesn't seem reasonable that you could launch someone into a 44 minute tangent of your choosing.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      They're skippable; I don't know the YouTube costing, but I presume they're not much more expensive (because everyone skips) - the real expensive rolls are the shorter non-skippable ones. I've mostly seen them on kids shows (kids are unlikely to skip an ad at all anyway, though they should probably be taught how to) but one or two on other shows. There was a five? ten? minute chick-fil-a ad over Christmas if I remember correctly, about a girl and her grandfather making shoes or something.
kjreact 3y ago
I wish the FTC would also look at Roblox more carefully. So many parents blindly let their children play Roblox allowing them to get sucked into pay 2 win schemes, NFC trading and advergames.
- tristor 3y ago
  And Roblox is full of child predators.
pseudopersonal 3y ago
[flagged]
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
I can’t really think of harms I suffered as a child from watching ads. It probably made me want to buy more stuff but since I was a kid I had to ask my parents and they usually said no. I was slightly sad but then I got over it. So if anything it probably taught me to be a more discerning consumer that wouldn’t buy anything just because of an ad. If we hide the real world from children too much then how do we expect them to learn to deal with it all at once? They will turn 18, get a credit card, and be bombarded with ads they haven’t learned to control. Unless you want to argue that ads shouldn’t be shown to adults either (which has major free speech issues) I think it’s better for kids to learn to deal with them responsibly.
- 0xB31B1B 3y ago
  In the US, kids are bombarded with ads for sugary cereals and candy and we have a huge childhood obesity problem.
  - Brystephor 3y ago
    So to reverse this, if kids were shown advertisements about vegetables and gyms or other physical activities, then there would be no child obesity?
    - p0pcult 3y ago
      If they featured celebrities and cartoons and vegetables came with toys, as well as stopping the ads for garbage food...I'd guess more likely than not, we would go back to more typical levels of child obesity.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        In these kinds of moments I wish we had a parallel universe simulator because I would put pretty much any amount of money on that not being true. The fact that kids crave fat, protein, and sugar and don't like vegetables isn't some mystery or a product of Cap'n Crunch and is as old as refined sugar. What do you think those visions of sugar plums were all about? They're growing and their bodies are sending them the "more calories" signal 24/7. When I was in HS I could put down two Chipotle burritos without breaking a sweat. When I bake for my nephews I have to make them sickeningly sweet to my own pallet but they practically unhinge their jaws to eat it faster. Little kids also haven't developed a taste for bitter and sour which adults for some reason forget and act shocked they don't like broccoli. It stopped being bitter to you. I put all my chips on the fact that I had nowhere to expend all the excess energy. My neighborhood didn't have a park, I got a 30 minute recess, and the only entertainment that was readily available growing up was books, tv, and video games.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Nintendo and Disney are the most egregious for this. I see the effects on adults, people completely obsessed with their corporate mascots. Seems like every Zelda game is described by their fans as the 'Greatest Game of All Time', despite flaws that would be called out if the corporate mascots were not in the game. On a similar note, seeing the iphone use in teens due to the bubble color makes me think this is manipulating people with in-group bias which is extremely strong among teens. I personally remember begging my mom for clothes that were popular(abercrombie/american eagle). I'm not sure the solution, but as an adult, I hate these companies for manipulating people.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jrsdav 3y ago
  > Seems like every Zelda game is described by their fans as the 'Greatest Game of All Time', despite flaws that would be called out if the corporate mascots were not in the game. The first (and only) Zelda game I played was Breath of the Wild, and it was indeed one of the best games I've ever played. Certainly Nintendo is guilty of peddling mascots as monetary vehicles, but there is substance in the occasional great video game they develop, so I wouldn't necessarily put them in the same category as Disney... But Disney, on the other hand...they are a merchandise company -- full stop. Everything they do funnels directly into the licensing and selling merchandise (and not just to children -- those Loungefly backpacks are basically a contagion for adults). This made them $56.2 _billion_ in 2021. If you have young kids, it's incredibly hard to avoid the gravity well of toys, apparel, and all the other merchandise that Disney vomits out. And the funnel is the entertainment they produce, which is often feel-goody to the point where you begin to pass them off in your head as benign.
tristor 3y ago
> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Agreed. It's also extremely lucrative, and far predates the Internet. Manipulating kids is one of the most lucrative things a business can do, because getting the kids to ask the parents to buy something is far far more effective than even a close friend suggesting they buy something.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  99% of what I buy my kids based on their requests is not from ads. It’s stuff like they see an ice cream shop or whatever. (I guess you could consider that a form of ad) I think they are exposed to far less ads than I was actually because TV ads are mostly gone. I never hear them asking for some random toy like the kind I remember from my youth.
p0pcult 3y ago
>I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Yeah, i hate religion too.

by medler 3y ago

baggachipz 3y ago

> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Religion has entered the chat.

afavour 3y ago
The idea is to improve, not replicate all the bad parts.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
> Religion has entered the chat. Parenting in general has entered the cat. (That said, I do agree that we need boundaries on the manipulation of younger minds. I've seen others make this analogy before: We don't let kids buy cigarettes in stores -- why should they have the full force of addictive algorithmic social media unleashed on them? [for that matter, why should adults, but that's another story])
skizm 3y ago
I'm no fan of organized Religion, but I think there is a clear distinction here. Religion is opt-in (by the parents) where most advertising to kids isn't. You could argue that parents could take away their access to [phone|youtube|instagram|etc.], but kids will get access at school, or through their friends one way or another. The internet is too ubiquitous at this point to actually opt-out.
- p0pcult 3y ago
  You shouldn't be allowed to opt others in, especially those under the age of legally informed consent, to brainwashing.
  - Lord_Baltimore 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't think you should be able to opt children into atheistic teaching.
    - govg 3y ago
      Atheism isn't a belief system predicated on the existence of supernatural forces for whom we have no evidence. Wouldn't call it brainwashing.
    - mftrhu 3y ago
      You can't opt in to "atheistic teaching", it's simply the result of not opting in to any of the religious options.
      - p0pcult 3y ago
        You probably can indoctrinate someone with atheism, but it is, as you say, alao a potential outcome of rejecting the other options.
    - callalex 3y ago
      Can you define “atheistic teaching”?
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Religion isn't opt-in where I live, it's a mandatory part of the school system for every student of any background, students can only opt out once they are 18 and basically finished with school anyway. I'd understand if it was some ethics class that in part educates about religion, but in elementary to middle school it's 100% Jesus and angel stories. Separation of church and state my ass.

nightowl_games 3y ago

"Deliberately manipulating" is a biased term that negatively taints your statement. With the bias removed, the statement's ambiguity is revealed. You must unpack what you mean by "deliberately manipulating". For example, teaching and parenting is a form of deliberately manipulating. Picking my kid up when he's about to fall down a slide is deliberately manipulating. Handing him a banana is deliberately manipulating. We are deliberately manipulating children constantly and for critically good reasons.

medler 3y ago
You have a good point. I really meant deliberately manipulating with the intent of making them want to buy things, and especially manipulating their emotions to make them think their lives will be so much better if only they had the product being advertised, which is exactly what advertising aimed at kids tries to do
Devasta 3y ago
Caffeine is a drug, but when someone says "I don't want my kids doing drugs" we all know they aren't talking about Dr. Pepper. You knew exactly what they meant, why pretend otherwise?
- the_only_law 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nightowl_games 3y ago
  Upon a second reading I can see more specificity due to the focus on "advertising". I still think that unpacking what is good and what is bad advertising is a difficult line to draw. Statements like "manipulating children is bad" are kinda worthless statements. They are simply inflammatory. We need to speak more precisely and with more clarity in order to elevate each other's understanding. We cannot simply make simple statements for decades and expect things to progress in any meaningful way. The conversation itself needs to change.
Taywee 3y ago

ryoshu 3y ago

I really hated growing up with Transformers and He-Man and all of the other TV shows that were animated versions of toys I played with. Wait. I didn't hate that at all.

bombcar 3y ago
I noticed a Youtube ad on a kids video was literally a 44 minute Transformer cartoon. If you didn't hit skip, it would play for 44 minutes. Not sure what I feel about it.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  In the 80s and 90s there were multi-hour long blocks of toy ads disguised as cartoons. That’s all Transformers and He-Man ever were.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I love the Cheat Commandos parodies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4Od4Bl7cE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4Od4Bl7cE I still feel a bit different about cartoons that were toy ads vs pure toy ad, somehow.
- smolder 3y ago
  How is that possible? Don't long ads cost the advertiser more? It doesn't seem reasonable that you could launch someone into a 44 minute tangent of your choosing.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    They're skippable; I don't know the YouTube costing, but I presume they're not much more expensive (because everyone skips) - the real expensive rolls are the shorter non-skippable ones. I've mostly seen them on kids shows (kids are unlikely to skip an ad at all anyway, though they should probably be taught how to) but one or two on other shows. There was a five? ten? minute chick-fil-a ad over Christmas if I remember correctly, about a girl and her grandfather making shoes or something.

kjreact 3y ago

I wish the FTC would also look at Roblox more carefully. So many parents blindly let their children play Roblox allowing them to get sucked into pay 2 win schemes, NFC trading and advergames.

tristor 3y ago
And Roblox is full of child predators.

pseudopersonal 3y ago

[flagged]

zeroonetwothree 3y ago

I can’t really think of harms I suffered as a child from watching ads. It probably made me want to buy more stuff but since I was a kid I had to ask my parents and they usually said no. I was slightly sad but then I got over it. So if anything it probably taught me to be a more discerning consumer that wouldn’t buy anything just because of an ad. If we hide the real world from children too much then how do we expect them to learn to deal with it all at once? They will turn 18, get a credit card, and be bombarded with ads they haven’t learned to control. Unless you want to argue that ads shouldn’t be shown to adults either (which has major free speech issues) I think it’s better for kids to learn to deal with them responsibly.

0xB31B1B 3y ago
In the US, kids are bombarded with ads for sugary cereals and candy and we have a huge childhood obesity problem.
- Brystephor 3y ago
  So to reverse this, if kids were shown advertisements about vegetables and gyms or other physical activities, then there would be no child obesity?
  - p0pcult 3y ago
    If they featured celebrities and cartoons and vegetables came with toys, as well as stopping the ads for garbage food...I'd guess more likely than not, we would go back to more typical levels of child obesity.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      In these kinds of moments I wish we had a parallel universe simulator because I would put pretty much any amount of money on that not being true. The fact that kids crave fat, protein, and sugar and don't like vegetables isn't some mystery or a product of Cap'n Crunch and is as old as refined sugar. What do you think those visions of sugar plums were all about? They're growing and their bodies are sending them the "more calories" signal 24/7. When I was in HS I could put down two Chipotle burritos without breaking a sweat. When I bake for my nephews I have to make them sickeningly sweet to my own pallet but they practically unhinge their jaws to eat it faster. Little kids also haven't developed a taste for bitter and sour which adults for some reason forget and act shocked they don't like broccoli. It stopped being bitter to you. I put all my chips on the fact that I had nowhere to expend all the excess energy. My neighborhood didn't have a park, I got a 30 minute recess, and the only entertainment that was readily available growing up was books, tv, and video games.

hospitalJail 3y ago

Nintendo and Disney are the most egregious for this. I see the effects on adults, people completely obsessed with their corporate mascots. Seems like every Zelda game is described by their fans as the 'Greatest Game of All Time', despite flaws that would be called out if the corporate mascots were not in the game. On a similar note, seeing the iphone use in teens due to the bubble color makes me think this is manipulating people with in-group bias which is extremely strong among teens. I personally remember begging my mom for clothes that were popular(abercrombie/american eagle). I'm not sure the solution, but as an adult, I hate these companies for manipulating people.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jrsdav 3y ago
> Seems like every Zelda game is described by their fans as the 'Greatest Game of All Time', despite flaws that would be called out if the corporate mascots were not in the game. The first (and only) Zelda game I played was Breath of the Wild, and it was indeed one of the best games I've ever played. Certainly Nintendo is guilty of peddling mascots as monetary vehicles, but there is substance in the occasional great video game they develop, so I wouldn't necessarily put them in the same category as Disney... But Disney, on the other hand...they are a merchandise company -- full stop. Everything they do funnels directly into the licensing and selling merchandise (and not just to children -- those Loungefly backpacks are basically a contagion for adults). This made them $56.2 _billion_ in 2021. If you have young kids, it's incredibly hard to avoid the gravity well of toys, apparel, and all the other merchandise that Disney vomits out. And the funnel is the entertainment they produce, which is often feel-goody to the point where you begin to pass them off in your head as benign.

tristor 3y ago

> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Agreed. It's also extremely lucrative, and far predates the Internet. Manipulating kids is one of the most lucrative things a business can do, because getting the kids to ask the parents to buy something is far far more effective than even a close friend suggesting they buy something.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
99% of what I buy my kids based on their requests is not from ads. It’s stuff like they see an ice cream shop or whatever. (I guess you could consider that a form of ad) I think they are exposed to far less ads than I was actually because TV ads are mostly gone. I never hear them asking for some random toy like the kind I remember from my youth.

p0pcult 3y ago

>I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Yeah, i hate religion too.