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Ask HN: Should we teach kids to avoid Ads

10 points by imakesnowflakes ↗ HN
As long as we are living in a capitalistic world, we cannot do away with Ads completely. But I think there should be a balance. And as the 'forces' of capitalism wants to us as much ads as possible, we don't have any forces that opposes this. And I find Ads sneaking in more and more into our lives via different channels.

The danger that I see now is how oblivious people are to this fact. For eg. Most people consider Television as a means for THEIR entertainment. There was a time I used to believe that. But right now, I can only see it as a channel for advertising and the entertainment content is just used to bring you in front of it and keep you glued there. At no point in the course of my growing up, I had a reason to ask the question. "Is the TV in my house really for my entertainment?", and this I think is the most dangerous part. A missing awareness about what actually is going on. And how people does not see Ads and it's channels for what they are and hence are ok with them appearing in more and more channels..

Also there are cases where an Ad takes advantage of insecurities of a demographics to market stuff to them. I am from India and I know that people who can barely earn their living will spend money on Fairness creams that cost as much as a weeks food. The point here is not how the poor is exploited, but the huge influence such ads have on people (rich and poor alike) so that even someone who can barely earn their living ends up spending money to buy that stuff.

So my question is, should kids be taught about these stuff and teach them to avoid them as much as possible. I guess this will result in their increased well being (by reducing susceptibility to being taken advantage of their insecurities) and act as a checking force, at a personal level against the increasing prevalence of Advertising in our world..

12 comments

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informatimago
Of course.

But also it's really hard to avoid them all, they're very sneaky, with product placement in movies, etc.

But indeed, TV should be removed from your life entirely. Nowadays, you can get entertainment with the Internet, and it's easier to avoid ads there.

imakesnowflakes
> it's really hard to avoid them all, they're very sneaky, with product placement in movies..

Yes. product placement in movies and how people are increasingly ok with it, is one of the things that made me ask this question. And you are right that we cannot avoid them all. But I think the important thing is not simply to tell to avoid all ads, but to make future generations aware of parts of human behavior that can be taken advantage of. So that they can identify and grow some kind of resistance against such manipulations early on in their life.

I mean, we teach kids about a lot of stuff. But the most important study of all, the study of themselves, the study of man, or even the possibility of such a study, we leave them to figure out themselves. I am not sure if it is feasible to teach kids about such stuff...But may be, we need to figure out a way.

insoluble
In terms of being taken advantage of, I feel that there are areas outside of product ads that really are of greater importance. Politics is an important example where information, misinformation, and manipulation run rampant. Teaching kids to recognise influences and to introspect on intentions is essential if social and self awareness are to be sought. Understanding ads is like the training wheels of understanding social manipulation -- the penalties of misunderstanding are relatively small, but they do add up until the money adds down.
imakesnowflakes
Exactly. This is one reason why things like this should begin from our homes. One cannot expect such measures to come from governments or such establishments, as they would naturally prefer people to be vulnerable to such tactics.
lovelearning
"I know that people who can barely earn their living will spend money on Fairness creams that cost as much as a weeks food. ... even someone who can barely earn their living ends up spending money to buy that stuff."

Interesting that an essay on this very topic is trending right now on HN front page: http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-peo.... You might want to read it.

As for ads, let children make up their own minds. Not all ads are bad. Some ads I came across on the net made me buy stuff that eventually lead to picking up a very satisfying and fun hobby.

imakesnowflakes
Yes. I saw it just after I posted this. Felt really weird.

But the point I was trying to make was a bit different. That post was arguing about how people can pick up cues from real life and use that information to arm themselves with expensive stuff with which they think they can climb up the social ladder. That is a very smart thing to do. But what Ads do is to feed people the same kind of info, only a highly skewed version of it to their advantage.

>As for ads, let children make up their own minds.

Yes let them. But I think we should also help them see things for what they really are. In case of Ads, how it initially appears to tell that 'hey, I have made this product', but how it also is about telling us 'hey, you need this product' creating a need when there is none, and how it can influence people subtly. And then let them make up their minds how much they want to be exposed to things like that.

andymurd
As the father of a four year old, it has been enlightening to watch his understanding of TV entertainment and advertising form. It's impossible to keep him away from TV ads altogether - even if TV was banned at home, many cafes and shops have a TV showing.

It's my duty as a parent to teach him about advertising. He's experimenting with telling lies and knows that lying is bad so I can use his experiences to teach some critical thinking about the advertising that he sees.

thomaskcr
I don't get the big deal on ads - I find the ad-block crowd dramatic, entitled and annoying and the internet without ads sounds like a huge pain (basically only going to sites I am subscribed to or that have organic advertising instead of explicit ads).

Just thinking back to my childhood, the things/toys other children got had a much bigger affect on me than what was advertised on TV. I think this is a non-issue.

Maybe I overestimate people, but I don't really see how by the time you would be more influenced by ads/media than your peers you haven't figured out that the person creating that ad is paid to sell you that item regardless of their personal feelings, the truth, etc. They're a way to find new things - I never even knew a product like "Power Swabs" existed until I heard their ad. I didn't just buy them, when I got home I looked up their reviews and decided against the purchase.

I've discovered a lot of stuff through ads, honestly mostly through targeted ones online - I don't really think of everything that makes my life better. I don't know how people are narcissistic enough to believe they will independently think of everything they ever want so that they can research a company that makes that. As long as you are cognizant of the motivations of the person creating that advertisement - why live a life afraid of the effect advertising may have on you?

imakesnowflakes
Sadly, what you say is only a small aspect of Advertising, or should I say, marketing? The major share of it is manipulative and geared towards creating a need or preferences towards a particular product.

My argument is that, we as a society, should grew some form of resistance against such manipulations. Why? Because when a society responds to manipulation and marketing much better than the actual quality of the product, where is the incentive for the companies to improve the quality of the actual product? Hence all the efforts that should ideally go towards the creation of a better product goes into more aggressive marketing.

One can already see this happening with the blockbuster movies. Big studios start hyping up big releases as early as 2 years and continue to maintain the hype by releasing trailer and trailers of trailers, articles about how the director is a master of the craft and how the movie is going to be insane. But when you see the movie, it will be often mediocre. But the movie will be a hit regardless.

Another example. When you can influence doctors and can make then write prescriptions of your companies drug, does it make sense to spend more money improving the drug or spend a fraction of that amount, increasing marketing towards the doctors?

So I think if we grow more susceptible to such manipulations, the quality of things will continue to go down..

thomaskcr
If more marketing results in more sales, that's what they're going to do. Living a life paranoid about marketing seems like a severe overreaction -- why not just be a more discerning customer? It's pretty clear the vast, vast majority of sales are driven by marketing and not quality - to the point that quality in a lot of industries is considered a niche. Living a life afraid of marketing and feeling like a victim seems a lot worse than buying some crappy stuff. The more positive use of your energy in my opinion is just being a more discerning customer.

> One can already see this happening with the blockbuster movies. Big studios start hyping up big releases as early as 2 years and continue to maintain the hype by releasing trailer and trailers of trailers, articles about how the director is a master of the craft and how the movie is going to be insane. But when you see the movie, it will be often mediocre. But the movie will be a hit regardless.

This is the movie industry reacting to a changing market more than anything else in my opinion. Movies are just moving towards the new LCD of people who will actually pay for movies. People are watching less movies, and lets face it a lot of the people who enjoy the types of movies I assume you enjoy (I am just assuming we have similar taste) are people who are likely to pirate -- the movie industry isn't going to cater towards a demographic that is relatively unlikely to pay for their content.

People obviously enjoy the behind the scenes stuff, so its a pretty obvious move to give more access to the public "faces" for your movie (namely director and major stars).

Releasing trailers early and gauging interest lets them know how much money to sink into the movie -- they need a higher hit rate than they've had in the past to make money on their "portfolio". So obviously they are going to change the process and move towards safer movies (reboots are becoming more frequent for example).

> The major share of it is manipulative and geared towards creating a need or preferences towards a particular product.

Okay? Isn't that basically the definition of marketing? The entire formula is the more people that know your product and feel like they need it, the more people buy it.

zhte415
Yes. Turn off the TV when ads come on. Educate why.
kleer001
Avoidance is prohibition and prohibition only fires up interest. See: drugs.

What you want is ridicule. Make fun of ads. Point out their unspoken biases, their crazy assumptions, and absurdity. Ads are ridiculous. Why the heck should I buy something just because there's nice music and pretty people? I don't need that junk.

Or if the particular ad is pretty point out that you like it, but think it's tacky that art like that is being used to sell something.