The Myth of Normal 154

The profit imperative animating materialistic society is superbly adept in exploiting these culturally generated pseudo-needs of children and youths. “We should be gravely concerned about our society’s soul,” the University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan writes in Childhood Under Siege. [8] As meticulously documented as it is shocking, Bakan’s book depicts the multiple ways corporations deploy a sophisticated and sinister understanding of children’s emotional needs to generate profit. Here the manipulation has been, and continues to be, very conscious indeed. In 1983 corporations spent $100 million in direct advertising to children. Less than three decades later, that figure had shot up to $15 billion.[*] Even as parental stress and peer orientation weaken children’s connections with nurturing adults, the corporate siege of immature minds has exploited and exacerbated the void created by the loss of connection. They act symbiotically to drain childhood of the emotional richness our development thrives on. A decade ago Bakan warned, “The average child in the United States watches 30,000 television advertisements a year—most of which pitch products directly to them . . . and all conveying a series of subtle, and corrosive, messages: that they will find happiness through their relationships with products—with things, not people; that to be cool and accepted by peers, they need to buy certain products; that fast food and toy companies, not parents and teachers, know what is best for them; that corporate brands are the true bases of their social worth and identities.”[9] These trends have only accelerated since then with the further spread of social media and digital advertising. Bakan has interviewed some of the world’s leading children’s marketers. One of them, Denmark’s Martin Lindstrom, expressed serious qualms about the results of his work. According to Lindstrom, Bakan writes, “children’s constant and deepening exposures to marketing is leading to a ‘disaster in terms of kids and their futures . . . very unhealthy, and it’s just the beginning we are seeing now.’” Lindstrom predicted that his industry would continue to erode children’s imaginations and creative capacities. For all that, he stayed on the job. “These marketers are smart, insightful, and quite evil,” Bakan told me, “because they understand what they’re doing. [Lindstrom,] when you