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Originally Posted by The Yen Man
Love the "in my day" arguments. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, kids were subjected to just as much advertising, albeit through less channels. Sure the internet wasn't publically available, but there were a ton of ads on TV and on billboards. Kids begged to go to MacDonalds. Every kid wanted the latest Transformers, NES, and Super NES. We were just as materialistic back then as kids are now.
In fact, I would argue kids today are more informed than we were. They have a wealth of info right at their finger tips. Myths are instantly debunked, and there are consumer reviews of just about every product you can imagine.
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Even at an age prior to consumer reviews, I think there's a positive application to the Internet in relation to commercialization. My son is allowed a bit of supervised ipad time, and he'll occasionally spend that time on Youtube, looking at other kids playing with toys. But he isn't interested in new toys as much as he's interested in seeing what other kids are doing with the marble runs or wooden trains or lego blocks or other toys he already has. Then he puts it away and tries to do the same on his toy set. Or he'll want to know how marbles are made, for example, and we can watch that as well. For me, reinforcing the value of toys he already has is something I really appreciate.
I do believe, overall, that educating your child about advertisements is a more effective than trying to limit their exposure to them (although you can obviously try to do both, to a certain extent). I'll let you know how that works out in about 15 years.
