Abstract
Reviewed by Tom Wilkinson, Psychological Well-being Practitioner, NHS, UK
Jim Wild poses a controversial question: Has commercial, corporate and sexual exploitation reached such an undesirable level that it is significantly harming children and young people, creating a new and more subtle form of child abuse?
This book comprises a series of contributions from child welfare and psychology experts describing how children in modern societies are being increasingly bombarded with relentless advertising and messages by mainstream media. They argue that this is encouraging young people to think and behave in ways that are potentially harmful to their physical and psychological health. The authors explain how the risk is greater now than ever, when children are spending more time in front of screens, on social media and have direct access to many forms of portable technology. They make recommendations on how we can intervene at an individual and community level in order to do more to protect children from potential harm.
Section one focuses on the commercial exploitation of young people by corporations that through mass marketing are creating a ravenous culture of consumerism, fuelled by a cycle of desire, acquisition and dissatisfaction. Expensive products and brands have become a source of identity and belonging for many young people, and can even provide a shield to the stigma of poverty for low-income children. The need to ‘keep up’ and continually purchase the latest product or trend to avoid exclusion and bullying has become intense. This reliance on material possessions has adverse implications for young people’s social and emotional well-being; for many, self-worth has become a commodity that can be bought.
Section two ponders the extent to which the hyper-sexualisation of modern culture is affecting the beliefs, attitudes and ultimately behaviour of young people. For example, images of young, slim, ‘sexed-up’ women in mainstream media and popular culture are not only ubiquitous but are also crowding out alternative images of being female, so much so that girls can be deemed ‘prudes’ for not acting or appearing in this idealised way. Meanwhile, through the internet more young people are accessing pornography which legitimises aggression towards women who are objectified and exploited. If people construct their notions of reality through the media they are exposed to, this is a concern.
Many parents are aware of these growing dangers to their children but what can we do about it? Section three explains how we might best fight back against commercial and sexual exploitation and provides important recommendations for parents, teachers and anyone working closely with children. At a time when governments appear to be increasingly influenced by powerful corporations, the authors assert the need to be creative, adopting a flexible DIY approach to dealing with these problems at an individual and community level. Parents and teachers should engage with children and provide them with a running analysis of the media they are being exposed to and its underlying motives, teaching them to think critically and ultimately take responsibility for the type and amount of media they access. 1 Engaging children in campaigns resisting the potentially harmful actions of powerful organisations would also send an important message.The novelty of this collection lies in its suggestion that the actions of corporations and mainstream media are constituting a form of child abuse. For those in loco parentis, such as foster carers and residential workers, this is an especially important claim. We may need to start viewing things from this perspective in order to provoke wider social change around the issue.