Just Click and Buy: Interactive Media and the Commercialization of Youth

Amy Aidman, Ph.D., Center for Media Education

I.                   How many young people are using Internet & why are adults concerned?

• A study by the US Commerce Department, documented that more than 116 million Americans were online as of August of 2000. Almost  ¾ of Americans aged 12 to 17 are online. 
• Young people have varied access to computers and the internet at school.  Parents want young people to have access to the Internet at home because they don’t want their children to be left behind; they believe that online access will help them in school.
• Concerns about the new technologies include traditional ones about children and media and the added interactive factor of today’s new technologies--privacy and commercialism.

II.                 What is new about these new media technologies and how do young people use the internet and other electronic services?

·         The new media bring together things from older technologies, mail, phone, audio, video and combine interactivity with the ability to bridge the limits of space and time to create something entirely new.  And it is happening faster than we are able to consider what it is doing to us as people and to our culture.

·         Children of different ages are using media in different ways and we need to consider a child’s developmental, along with individual personality when we think about making rules or guiding behavior.  Especially difficult when it comes to teens.  And teens do not have any special protection under the law as do children under 13 through COPPA. 

·         COPPA—The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act--provides safeguards to protect the online privacy of children under the age of 13.

·         Older children often know more than adults do about how to use the new technologies.

·         For teens the Internet is used for social and entertainment purposes above all else.  The use of the Internet for communication is to be expected, since this is a time of life when teens are turning their attention away from the home toward peers and also working on their own identities. 

·         Advertising content and other content are increasingly blurred online.

·         An Aug. 13, 2001 article in BusinessWeek Online (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_33/b3745121.htm) says that 2/3 of all internet sites designed for kids and teens use advertising as their main revenue stream. 

·         The interactivity of online media has implications for establishing norms of consumer behavior in children and youth.  Impulse buying, use of credit & debit cards.

·         Convergence—at some point in the not too distant future, it is likely that all of these technologies will converge.  If television becomes a click and buy medium, there will have to be specific safeguards put in place for children to prevent unfair practices.

III.       Envisioning a positive children’s media environment

·         Effectiveness of legislation—COPPA. 

·         Non-commercial media have traditionally been sites of financial struggle.  Support needed for a public element in our media system.

·         This is a unique moment in this country’s media system.  Need to be creative in our thinking about how to create and maintain a media system that will serve the needs of all children.