Advertisements Suck. Advertising to Kids REALLY Sucks.

On Advertisements and Junky Economics and Stuffed Piggies this Holiday Season

“But I. WANT. PIGGY.” With tears streaming down her face, my 3 year old is in full-melt down mode. She hurls herself to the floor, kicking and writhing her body down the aisle.

We had stopped by Target to grab a few toddler snacks in what should have been a 5 minute errand. 30 minutes later, I can see I was clearly wrong.

By sheer happenstance, we had just checked out a Peppa Pig library book earlier that morning. In other words, pigs were on my toddlers’ mind. And that was even before we turned the corner out of the snack aisle to run smack into a full display of fuzzy stuffed animals.

Now, she’s clenching Piggy with both hands, hugging him to her chest. She tries, a few times, to take off in a full sprint down the aisle.

I suggest taking a picture with Piggy, saying we can talk about it for Christmas or a birthday. “I want a picture and to TAKE HIM HOME.” The wails continue. “He’s my piggy.”

“Honey, he’s actually the store’s piggy,” I say. The tears continue.

“Remember how we’ve talked about how some things are bad for the Earth? Piggy has some things in him that are bad for little bodies and bad for the Earth, but we can find you a piggy another time.” Her big, questioning eyes look up at me, the wails momentarily paused.

As I try to gently pry piggy out of her grasp, the wails start up again. “But I. LIKE. HIM.” There’s no reasoning with an irate 3-year old, but she settles, finally, for being carried down the store aisle— with the added benefit of getting her as far from the pig in question as possible.

We make it to the self check-out, where my toddler once again bolts out of my arms to beeline for the back of the store. I very briefly consider letting her run until she loses steam, but the girl’s got an impeccable sense of direction and might have, in fact, navigated successfully through beauty and home goods to reach the pig. I can assure you she did not get that sense of direction from me, as navigating Target is a feat I can hardly manage as a 30 year old.

So instead, my youngest stays buckled into the cart, happily people-watching with the cashier while I chase after my oldest. She’s delighted to be momentarily on her own, casting furtive glances back to see if she’s being followed while shrieking, “Piggy, I’m coming!”

Writing this, it’s hard not to giggle (although it wasn’t quite as funny at the time). Lots of factors were at play: I’d made the cardinal mistake of going to a store too close to nap time. My guard was down because my girls are historically more than happy to stay in the cart. I didn’t expect to have to be on the lookout for stray cuddly pigs on the snack aisle.

But I’m also going to lay some responsibility for this ordeal right on the store’s feet.

Here’s why: Stores KNOW what they are doing with product placement when they put stuffed animals in the toddler snack aisle, or colorful bath toys right by the diapers. Retailers invest heavily in creepy little cameras tracking where your eyes stop on a store shelf and how long you read the back of the box before saying, “what the crap is Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate and Mono-how do I even pronounce that? Oh well, not a today problem” and throwing the Ding Dongs into your cart. And if you’ve ever thought you might be being watched by a mannequin— spoiler alert, you probably were. Turns out the unblinking eyes staring straight into your soul are actually a great spot to hide cameras that track demographics and shopper movements through the store.

But it doesn’t take all the vaguely disturbing hidden cameras and elite ‘product placement’ experts to tell you that a store aisle is a pretty good place to market to children. Unless you plan on exclusive grocery-delivery for 18+ years or finding a baby-sitter for every grocery run, at some point, your child will probably find their way into a store. Once you’ve crossed the line and entered the automatic doors, all bets are off. The phenomenon even has a name— multiple names, in fact. But whether you call it the ‘nag factor’ or ‘pester power,’ retailers are betting that parents will break down in the aisle and say ‘yes’ just to keep the peace.

On Catalogue Marketing. And YouTube Marketing. And, just Marketing.

It’s hard to be that mad at creative product placement in stores because, well, you walked into a store, right? And the store— if it’s going to, you know, sell you ‘things’— needs to put those ‘things’ somewhere. And it makes more sense to put them on shelves than in boxes in the back waiting for you to walk up and request something, because that would be like Amazon but in person. Weird, right? Never mind that stuffed animals still have no place beside the toddler snacks.

But something I can be mad at? Toy catalogues. The most ubiquitous of these is the Amazon toy catalogue, which we, thankfully, have never received— no, you aren’t allowed to sign me up for it, not as a practical joke and not even if you hate me. But its delivery day marks a dreaded day of the year when children exclaim in glee over everything they think they want, but that won’t actually make them happy.

I remember receiving the American Girl catalogue for years as a kid. I looooved looking through the catalogue and seeing all the creative historical accessories (I wasn’t exactly setting myself up to win a middle school popularity contest). But even as a preteen, I was plenty snarky about materialism, and I remember rolling me eyes at the ‘made for you’ doll line. I even had the distinct impression that anyone with more than one American Girl doll must be a ‘brat.’ (This had nothing to do with the girl who pranced onto the bus bragging about her 12 AG dolls and all their accessories…but also, adult me is sorry for that thought and I’m sure you’re a lovely person anyway).

These catalogues aren’t some Farmer’s Almanac there for informational purposes. Instead, companies are paying pennies— not to mention contributing to deforestation— to deliver their advertisements straight to our door.

And what happens if we separate the product from all the glitzy marketing? Even as an adult, I’ll admit that the American Girl catalogue is breathtaking. Glossy images and dolls having an absurd amount of fun in their $175 horse stable or $225 sports car (the equivalent of an actual car payment…)? That sounds lovely! And as a mom, do I do a little squeal when I see my little girl getting to match her doll— you bet. (Side note, but thank you thank you thank you to Apple Park for finally making organic doll clothes that match organic toddler clothes. But I have an ever-so-slight problem now that my oldest wears 5T sooo if anyone knows of any other kinda-nice-to-the-earth-match-your-doll-clothing-companies pretty please let me know).

But the dolls themselves, and all the plastic accessories? Not so nice. Or, at least, not nearly as nice as the catalogues make them look. The tiny plastic limbs don’t bend quite right to fit on the tiny plastic furniture, and you’d be hard-pressed to justify a $26 teensy takeout coffee set (I really wish I was kidding here) for a teensy plastic mouth that will never get to experience the pure bliss that is caffeine after Daylight Savings.

The tiny plastic limbs don’t bend quite right to fit on the tiny plastic furniture, and you’d be hard-pressed to justify a $26 teensy takeout coffee set for a teeny plastic mouth that will never get to experience the pure bliss that is caffeine after Daylight Savings.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? The glitzy catalogues aren’t just selling a product, they are selling a life— not only to us, but to our kids, too. Buy this toy and you’ll smile just like the kid in the catalogue! Happiness is only one holiday away!

Only now, exposure to products doesn’t just happen every few months in a stray catalogue. Instead, children are bombarded with advertisements nearly constantly.

A 2015 study of pre-teens in New Zealand, for example, found that over the course of one 10 hour day of wearing a ‘body-cam,’ children were exposed to, on average, 554 brand images— the equivalent of one every minute. This is a seriously conservative estimate relative to those of us in the United States, where children are exposed to thousands of advertisements on a daily basis.

Some advertisements, such as billboards, are all but inevitable. And some, like characters on a cereal box, are bound to happen occasionally. But advertisements are no longer just a tiny by-product of consuming cereal boxes or weekend cartoons— they are also the main attraction.

The ‘unboxing’ and ‘haul’ videos that influencers are known for have also come for the child audience, in the form of toy unboxing videos. As perhaps the most famous example, now-12 year old Ryan of Ryan’s World releases daily toy unboxing and play videos— bringing in an estimated $35,000,000 every year. Great deal for Ryan, not so much for the preschoolers too young to understand they are being targeted by multi-billion dollar toy companies.

Please know that I’m not coming for all the screens in your home— but advertisers sure are. In fact, when researchers examined apps for children under 5, they found predatory behavior there, too, such as “dancing treasure chests [that] give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly” and, in one truly horrifying case, an app where “an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something.”

In millennial speak, I can’t even.

This edition of Sustain Initiative brought to you in partnership with 2 sick kiddos and the rare treat of television…

It’s okay to want things, kind of.

I want to teach my girls that it’s healthy, and normal, to want things for ourselves. It’s okay to want the piggy on the shelf, just like it’s okay for me to want a pair of jeans or a beautiful laundry basket.

But it can be a serious mistake to conflate our material wants with our happiness, and that’s exactly what marketers are trying to do to our impressionable kids and our impressionable selves.

Do I need a laundry basket to haul things from point A to point B? Probably, unless I intend to traipse up and down the stairs with over-flowing armfuls of socks and t-shirts. But having a pretty laundry basket isn’t actually going to make the task that much more pleasant, nor will it change my baseline happiness in the world.

Is my child’s life greatly enriched by having a doll? Sure. But the second doll brings a little less enrichment, and the 13th doll would just be clutter (in economics, this is called the law of diminishing returns).

It’s incredibly difficult as adults to manage to regulate ourselves when we are being constantly bombarded by advertisements. It’s hard to remind ourselves that new clothes, home decor, or gadgets won’t fix our problems. That we will somehow still survive if we miss the latest online sale. That we will, in fact, feel better if we put down our phones to be present.

And yet we expect our children to have this figured out. But really, we have to be the gate-keepers of our children’s experiences. Whether you are a parent or not, chances are that you are somehow ‘child-adjacent’— whether as a grandparent, doting aunt/ uncle or friend of the family. You have the opportunity not only to ‘gate-keep’ what the children in your life experience, but also to demonstrate to them your lived example of an intentional life.

If you don’t want your child to be advertised to, you have to set the parameters— because corporations and governments aren’t exactly jumping to do it for you. That will, of course, look different for every family— maybe you allow Netflix but not conventional TV, choose audio-only players over iPad time, or not allow your teens to use social media. Of course, the best gate-keeping won’t protect your children from advertisements forever. But if you’re lucky, you’ll buy them a few more years of brain development before you have to teach them to resist the siren song of consumerism.

I want my children to have a magical, joy-filled childhood. One filled with hikes and art projects, stories and favorite dolls. Not advertisements and constant online notifications. The ‘grown-up’ world will come for them soon enough.

On Junky Economics

Between me and you, I dread the day that I have to really explain our economic system to my kids. I can do a supply/demand curve or explain opportunity costs and comparative advantage with the best of ‘em. But I do not have the words I need to explain to my children that some people make lots (like, truly absurd amounts) of money by producing things in ways that harm people— even little children like them— and our Earth. I do not have the words to explain why we won’t buy the Piggy on the Target shelf, because it’s made with polyester that will wash micro-plastic into our waterways and chemicals that will live on in my child’s endocrine system long after Piggy has made its way out of our lives.

And while the workers actually manufacturing these toys are woefully under-paid, ‘toddler experts’ are being paid plenty to promote plastic junk and companies are bringing in billions of dollars in profit on weird novelties like Squishmallows and poop-plunging games (aptly named “Flushin Frenzy”).

You guys, I was SO. IRRITATED. that I was being obnoxiously told that Fisher-Price was the magic key to my toddler’s developmental milestones that I actually SAID SOMETHING. I promise I’m not normally a troll and this was like my second post on Instagram ever? Sorry not sorry.

Please know, I’m not angry at store associates, individual toy designers, or even a specific toy company. I’m mad at the system. I’ve sat in classrooms with 11 year old students as they fretted about problems much bigger than them: About sea turtles dying, forever chemicals, relatives with cancer, and even the ‘no-win’ grocery store choice of organic food wrapped in plastic or ‘conventional’ fruits and veggies loose (something I, as an adult, hadn’t even realized— but was obvious to this kiddo). In short, too much for any one little heart to bear.

I want to say: it’s not your problem. Enjoy and cherish every second of your childhood. One day, you will be an adult— but until then, all the grown-ups will carry the weight of making this world deserving of you. We will do the hard work so you don’t have to.

But that’s not what I see. Sure, I ‘look for the helpers,’ just like I taught my middle-school students. But I still see governments that bankroll fossil fuels (I wonder what else you could do with $1 trillion?) and record growth of single-use plastics. I’ve sat in meetings with leadership committees at the most progressive school in our area who wouldn’t provide a student + faculty requested shift as small as offering more refillable water stations across campus. Their reasoning? Water bottle sales brought in $40,000 a year (pennies compared to their multi-million dollar endowment). I witness companies whose obligation to next quarter profits and rosy shareholder statements outweighs their interest in protecting kids’ from advertisements or investing in long-term, sustainable growth that doesn’t pollute far-flung corners of the globe— all in the name of Black Friday sales.

And I think that when my own children finally realize that this world is not looking out for their future, it will break my heart.

The HOLIDAYS Are Coming! (in my head this is like ‘The British are coming! The British are coming!’ But I’m not Paul Revere and also the historical record is a little iffy on whether he actually screamed that, so take it as you will).

First off guys, I promise I’m not this depressing at parties.

But I’m gonna try real hard to be cheery again because I think there’s a quick win we can pull from all this meandering. The holiday season is coming up— which in most households means a barrage of “I want that” and, well, stuff. And while the holiday season probably isn’t a great time to teach your kid about forever chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a great time to talk about gratitude— and being intentional with what comes into our lives.

For my kiddos, the thrill of Halloween wasn’t even eating the candy, it’s getting candy (in fact, on Halloween morning when I announced, “You’ll even get to eat candy tonight!” my blank-faced toddler replied, “Huh?”). I think that holiday wish lists can be a little bit of the same— the thrill is in the wanting, not necessarily in the getting. Just last week, I suggested putting any of your nice-to-haves on a holiday wish list. For kids though, I think the concept can quickly get out of hand.

If a young kid, especially, is asked, “So what do you want for Christmas?” it’s actually too big of a question to get a good answer. The possibilities are endless! And how— as a little kid— do you know what you would use and enjoy anyway? I think the question needs a few more boundaries.

To test this hypothesis, I asked my 3 year old this exact question just the other day. Her first answer had been definitely planted by me— when the girls’ doll stroller broke a few weeks ago, I suggested putting new ones on their Christmas list. Sure enough, she asked for a stroller (oh thank goodness you want a stroller because we already have one in a box in the garage and it was going under the tree even if you didn’t put it on your list so this is nice).

She kept thinking. “Hmmm I think grammy and pappy need a sound machine to help them sleep in their cabin.” Adorable, sure, but not kids’ wish list material.

Framing the conversations around holiday gifts— are you outgrowing your tennis shoes? Do you need new soccer gear? Are you still enjoying playing Lego?— can help kids pick out what they might want or need. And, you can frame presents around categories— “need/want/wear/read”— or quantity (every kid gets 3 presents under the tree!).

It may also help to reduce overwhelm if not everything that makes it into a season change counts as a ‘present.’ For example, clothes are some of the best and most practical gifts for growing kids, and shoes or ‘next size up’ something is pretty much always on the list. But if every pair of mittens or leggings that needed changed out around December showed up under the tree, my kiddos would probably be in meltdown mode.

And, you can take this season as an opportunity to talk about gratitude and ‘enough.’ Super practical things— like volunteering at a food bank or donating outgrown toys— can help your kids understand that they have ‘enough’ (without the preachy “some kid is starving and you didn’t finish your dinner!”). And, of course, you can focus on family traditions and experiences that make the holiday season more meaningful.

The Minimalists have one of my all-time favorite quotes about the holiday season, summing up the shopping frenzy as, “At some point Santa Claus turned corporate.” You can talk about that, too— how in some cultures, Santa brings fruit, or in others, people exchange books to read on Christmas Eve. In other words, the holidays don’t look the same everywhere— and it’s okay if your family does it just a little bit differently.

If you find value in my work— and/or want to contribute to the get-my-toddler-a-Piggy fund— consider upgrading your subscription.

Etc.

Erin Boyle of TEA NOTES wrote a hilarious ode to protecting her promotions tab— I laughed out loud at her “TIME IS RUNNING OUT. LAST CHANCE. YOU WILL MEET AN UNTIMELY DEATH IF YOU DON’T BUY THIS GADGET, PROBABLY.”

Speaking of making me laugh, Alex Dobrenko at Both Are True ranting about cell phones and “achievement society.” I have some musings about technology I think I’ll be dusting off in the next few weeks as well, so stay tuned!

Here are some “Minimalism for Kids” book recommendations (affiliate Bookshop profile) if you’re looking for some additional resources to support your family.

Also! From now through the end of December, I’ll be extending the ‘founding member’ benefit of a 30 minute Zoom call or e-mail consult (if you want it!) to everyone who decides to upgrade to a paid annual subscription ($60/year). We can chat about whatever you want— but here’s just a few ideas:

• Troubleshoot your spending triggers

• Make eco-friendly and low-waste swaps work for your lifestyle or small business

• How to navigate gift-giving and boundaries this holiday season

(Already a paid subscriber? Not to worry— this offer applies to you as well. Just e-mail me to redeem!).