Tomorrow Today

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Transforming childhood: from reinforcing

consumerism to inspiring sustainable living

Erik Assadourian, Senior Fellow, Worldwatch Institute and Executive Director, The Fangorn Group

chool is an important influence in children’s lives. Most chil-

dren around the world spend more than 180 days per year in

school – typically five to six hours a day – learning basic liter-

acy, cultural norms and societal mores.

Some children, for example

in Japan, spend more than 240 days in school each year.

Formal

education is still a central force in shaping children’s values, thoughts

and ambitions. But in many countries, the media are just as, if not

more, influential in shaping childhood. In the United States, children

now spend an average of 7.5 hours a day, 365 days a year, engaging

with various media.

And since US children today are multi-taskers,

they’re actually cramming nearly 11 hours of media exposure into

those 7.5 hours.

Each year, marketers spend more than USD17

billion marketing to children worldwide – much of this directed

through the media.

The media and marketers have become primary

caregivers for a large percentage of the world’s children today, with

parents and teachers playing supporting roles at best.

Unfortunately, the values, information and ambitions cultivated by

the media and marketers are often at cross purposes with the educa-

tional messages shared in schools – especially regarding sustainable

living. For example, while school lessons may regularly discuss the

importance of healthy eating, these lessons are drowned out by the

presence of vending machines, sweet-sponsored curricular materials

in classrooms, unhealthy school menus and the countless advertise-

ments that fast food and sweet companies target at children.

Of course, it is not surprising that marketers have so aggressively

targeted children, as children have significant discretionary income

and can play an important role in influencing parents’

spending choices.

Businesses recognize this and market

to them. Some, like The Walt Disney Company, even hire

anthropologists to better understand children’s interests,

hobbies and purchasing preferences, so that their market-

ing campaigns can be more effective.

The unfortunate

side effect is that childhood is filled with hundreds of

advertisements a day, all of which reinforce a perception

of reality that happiness comes through the products and

services one buys, owns and uses.

To create sustainable cultures, we need to transform

education – and childhood more broadly – so that

children no longer grow up learning to be consumers

but instead learn to become guardians of the environ-

ment and active healers of the Earth’s systems. The only

question is how to achieve this. In short, there are three

aspects of childhood that will need to be addressed.

Firstly, we will need to address children’s access to the

media and what children are exposed to through the

media. Secondly, leisure time activities will need to be

designed to reinforce principles of sustainability and

respect for nature. And thirdly, formal education will

need to integrate principles of sustainability directly

into all aspects of the educational experience. If these

three elements of childhood can be systematically refor-

mulated, perhaps today’s children will no longer grow

up mimicking film celebrities and rock stars, but instead

will strive to be like our boldest environmental and

political leaders. And perhaps children will no longer

covet the newest ‘iGadget’ and fashion accessory, but

instead work to obtain the next Earth Scout badge and

environmental education award. This shift is possible,

but it will not come without a concerted effort to rede-

sign three key elements of childhood: formal education,

leisure activities and media influences.

Addressing media exposure

Such a significant amount of time is spent by children

with the media, much of the content reinforcing consum-

erist values and pitching consumer goods, that the first

and foremost task will be to rein in marketers’ influence

over the media and children’s total media access.

One of the key tools for this is of course to better

monitor marketing to children. Several Scandinavian

countries have done so recently and, in the past few years,

Spain has become a leader in curbing marketing exposure

to its population, first by banning advertisements on its

Watching TV. The media are influential in shaping children’s values and preferences

Image: Leonid Mamchenkov