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It’s no secret professionals and families want improved privacy protections for children and students, but what is the actual state of kids’ privacy? Findings indicate consistently industries target children; this is considered a form of grooming.
In general, grooming refers to the process of building trust and emotional connections with someone, sadly media, and internet interactional video games present themselves as an emotional connection, in many other ways media attacks our children – to exploit them in some way. This can take many different forms but typically involves a manipulative individual using flattery, gifts or other tactics to gain the trust of their target. Tactics we are discussing – behavioral, social and cognitive manipulation.
The word grooming has a negative connotation, although it fits perfectly when addressing marketing tactics as a manipulative individual.
Kids are exposed to targeted advertising from the apps and services they use every day at home and in the
classroom. What could
this possibly do with addiction?
The most popular applications and services that are currently used by millions of children at home for play and homework, and by tens of millions of students in classrooms across the country are chosen not by the child, this is the great allusion that we somehow are in control as consumers of, what we watch, what we eat, the clothes we wear, etc.
This line of thinking is reasonable when it comes
to our children. Despite their early stages of cognitive development, it’s estimated that children are the “explicit target” of more than $10 billion in marketing a year. They face the same onslaught of ploys as adults do before, they’ve built a working defense system.
Adults in America, are exposed to nonstop attempts to sway purchasing decisions. Many have come to expect this and mount at least a small amount of resistance to these carefully crafted marketing techniques.
What is targeted advertising? Targeting advertising occurs when a company shows you ads based on the personal information it collects about you and how you use the product. Behavioral advertisements take targeted advertisements one step further, collecting specific information about users typically through the use of cookies, beacons, tracking pixels, persistent identifiers or other technologies that provide more specific information about the user. Behavioral or targeted advertising based on a child’s personal information. Targeted advertising, whether used by a company that a child interacts with or by another company that purchases that information, is an exploitative and dangerous practice.
According to, Austin Perlmutter, M.D., article in Psychology Today: A child’s personal information, specific knowledge, traits and learned behaviors are used to influence their decision-making or desire to purchase goods and services. Evidence shows that youth are much easier to influence with marketing messages than adults. A review of the neuroscience, psychology and marketing literature shows that.
Adolescents, because of how the human brain develops, may be particularly attracted to branded products such as alcohol that are associated with risky behavior and that provide, in their view, immediate gratification, thrills and/or social status.
Exposure to alcohol advertising shapes attitudes and perceptions about alcohol use among both young people, ages 13-20, and young adults, ages 21 to 29. However, these attitudes and perceptions predict young people’s positive expectancies and intentions to consume alcohol.
It’s not just alcohol but with cannabis being legalized across the nation – 213 times more potent than it was in the 1960s we have an idea of what industry has in mind with our children. Why else would they start naming their new cannabis strands: Girl Scout Cookie, Skywalker, Cinderella 99, Cloud Walker, New York City Diesel? These are only a few names, that correspond to kids’ movies and characters. Big business is normalizing the use of cannabis.
My history teacher once said it doesn’t matter who is elected president because big business runs the nation. The government seems to be turning a blind eye to children. It’s our children who are ultimately paying the price.
Dr. Herb Clark of Murphy is an expert in the field of addiction with 33 years of experience. He served on the N.C. Professional Practice board, adjunct professor for two universities and was a U.S. Marine serving 25 years, through two wars and three conflicts traveling the world, seeing the effects of addiction firsthand worldwide. Send questions or comments to him at hypno321@hotmail.com.