Pushing Back Against Rampant Commercialism

I watch nervously as my elderly father gets irritated by the fast-paced images and sounds blaring from the movie screen in front of us. We’re sitting in a darkened theater waiting to see “The Borrowers,” an animated film from one of our favorite directors, Hayao Miyazaki. But before we can enjoy his brilliant work, we are being subjected to 20 minutes of very loud and frenetic nonstop commercials on the huge screen.

For some reason, the movie theater, just like our television at home, plays the commercials much louder than regular programming. And although I knew it was coming, I was still shocked at the bombardment of our space—20 minutes of ads before being able to see a movie that we had already paid for. It would be a different situation if the movie had been free and ads were part of the deal, but suddenly we’ve accepted this tacked-on time and trapped attention as the “price” for watching the film. 

My father is agitated, but the children, aged 7–10, are silent and transfixed by the screen. My husband and I soon realize that, to our dismay, after the outright commercials we are now on to the previews (which are commercials too), and none of them are rated for the age of the kids present for the main showing. I cover my seven-year-old son’s eyes from the violent action-movie clip. We make a note to complain to the theater but forget to do so as we herd the crew out.

As a society, we accept advertising’s ever-widening reach as the “price” of living in our culture. Every day, every hour, in almost every facet of our lives, it has crept in to lodge itself into our unconscious, to imprint on us cultural truths about the way we should look and behave and buy in order to “fit in” to society. And advertisers rely on the best research and strategies of manipulation, spending more than $19 billion a year to tap into our psyches and pocketbooks.

The advertising industry has managed to extend its tentacles into both our public and private spaces: infiltrating movies, TV shows, the Internet, and social media sites; saturating our streets, buses, and cars; and marring our landscapes with ugly billboards shouting at us on most every highway. It’s entered our homes, as more and more toys have some kind of cross-promotion advertising tied to them. And it’s wormed its way into our daily activities, accosting us in restaurants and bathrooms, at gas-station pumps, and worst of all, in our schools, where corporations seek to use product placement and sponsorship programs to reach younger and younger children.

Rampant commercialism is a topic that very few organizations or groups want to talk about or challenge in any systematic way, yet it’s a dominating force in our culture, and one that we can’t escape no matter how hard we try. We need to better understand the broad social impact that advertising has on us. The visual pollution is one issue, but advertising’s broader and deeper impact is the pervasive and unchallenged role that it plays in feeding unsustainable consumption and harming our mental and physical health as individuals and as communities.

And, while we’re all at risk for the harm caused by excessive advertising, our children are in even more danger. Because children have less-developed cognitive capacities, they are particularly susceptible to the harms caused by this advertising onslaught. And, over the past few decades, the degree to which marketers have scaled up efforts to reach children is staggering. In 1983, they spent $100 million on television advertising to kids. Today, they pour roughly 150 times that amount into a variety of mediums. The results of this onslaught are striking. 

Research suggests that aggressive marketing to kids contributes not only to excessive materialism, but also to a host of psychological and behavioral problems. Moreover, this encouragement to value materialistic aims conflicts with children’s desire and ability to make the necessary changes required to live more sustainably.

At New Dream, we have always worked to push back against the rampant commercialism in our culture. And we are continuing this effort with the publication of our new guide, Kids Unbranded: Tips for Parenting in a Commercial Culture. The purpose of this guide is to give adults a greater understanding of what children face today, and to offer resources to help parents, educators, and advocates band together to protect children from intrusive and harmful advertising. We believe that it’s important to help children reclaim valuable noncommercial space in their lives – space to be children, not merely consumers.

Let’s take on this challenge together. Get started by downloading your free copy today.