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December 31, 2007
NYT on "Web Playgrounds of the Very Young"
The story Web Playgrounds of the Very Young by Brooks Barnes in today's New York Times describes the way that the Web 2.0 interactive social networking version of the Internet has become a newer, more powerful version of the old Saturday morning cartoons for powerful media companies to adapt and indoctrinate kids into commercial culture: Media conglomerates in particular think these sites -- part online role-playing game and part social scene -- can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers.[...]"Get ready for total inundation," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today. The sites allow the children, variously, to create avatars, take care of brand name stuffed animals or penguins that come to life on the computer, spend points or even real money to buy things for their penguins, etc.
This summer, social scientist Kathryn Montgomery, Ph.D., of American University, published perhaps the leading book on the digital commercialization of youth: Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet. Here's an excerpt:
The driving force behind this exploding media culture is the exponential rise in children's spending power during the past several decades, prompted in part by the very changes in family structure that are confounding the role of parents. Never before have children and youth played such a powerful role in the marketplace. The Internet emerged as a new mass medium in the midst of an already highly commercialized children's culture. An enormous advertising and market-research industry was ready and waiting to adapt its strategies to the Digital Age. With the promise of e-commerce profits, "Echo Boomers," "the New Millennials," and "Generation Y" became prized consumers in the growing new economy.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at December 31, 2007 07:17 AM
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