I’m a regular lurker of http://www.Adrants.com – a site that spoofs advertising and all its zaniness and generally allows for casual social commentary, some good, some bad, and more often than not, shows an inordinate amount of boobs, which I’m certain is social commentary in itself.
One particular post stood out from last week, called: "Advertisers: Wake Up And Smell The Sex". Folks, before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear this post, authored by Steve Hall – was in fact commentary on the prevalence of sex in advertising as a propellant of corruption in our youth. The post, and the many comments left by Adrants’ readers, continued to discuss how children are dressing sexier because they see it in ads, and are acting sexier because they see it on tv; and all the arguments we adults have heard in some form or another, regarding some medium or another. Take an adult theme of any sort, let a child have access to it, and you’re corrupting them. Period. That’s the argument.
It’s a similar argument posed by my college mentor, Neil Postman, which he penned in his book, “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century”. Neil has passed on, but the book published in 1999 still speaks fresh to a lesson gone out of fashion after 300 years, a lesson most adults of the 21st century forgot. The lesson, and the argument we adults have not heard enough in the last 5, or 10, or 15 years, is that 'childhood' was a concept fostered in the 1700's by some dude who noticed and enjoyed the innocence of youth in his children and made it his life’s mission to keep them that way as long as possible. This dude recognized that ‘childhood’ was a special state of being, unlike the state of being that neither he nor any of the other soured adults could possess any longer. Please recall, the tales of yore, where 12 year olds were cowboys, dads, wives, mothers, ranch owners, and farm hands, even thieves and murderers. In the 18th century, you were an adult and treated as an adult and punishable by law as an adult, when you were still a kid. The ‘age of reason’ smacked everybody at 7, and after that it was downhill. Seven was the new forty. Heck, most people didn’t even live to see forty! The concept of 'childhood' was fabricated in the last 300 years, thanks to kindergartens and public school systems; thanks to this one dude who decided his kids wouldn’t grow up to see the evils of the world, as long as he had anything to do with it.
When I read this in Postman’s book, I was awestruck, because I had just assumed kids were kids, always and forever – and the mysteries of puberty, the terrible twos, and tweenagers were set to a specific timeline, just like getting your drivers license. But in truth, no timeline exists for maturity, for education, for information dissemination in today’s world. We teach our infants to read, and our 7 year olds kung-fu, all of them watch the nightly news just like the rest of us, with its natural disasters and politics and murders and sex scandals and religious persecutions, and most of them get on the internet to find whatever they want, whenever they want it, from whomever will let them have it… at age 8, 11, 14, or 3. The timeline for childhood has disappeared in practice; it exists only as a lesson forgotten.
Neil touched upon something that was intuitive and prophetic - children of today have access to the same information systems that we adults do, we are no longer sheltering them and fostering a ‘childlike’ state through public schooling or even at home, thus they are becoming mini-adults, sans the emotional maturity or simple experience of dealing with the issues they’ve ‘absorbed’ directly. If I watch a TV show about re-tiling my bathroom, sometimes I feel empowered enough and knowledgeable enough on the topic that I’m almost tempted to pick up a sledgehammer and start the job. The truth is, I don’t know jack-diddily about re-tiling my bathroom, let alone how to use a sledgehammer – but the television viewing process fosters within me a sense of knowledge and experience regarding the subject, which doesn’t exist. Man o’ man – you should try and talk to me after I’ve checked out doityourself.com! It’s like I was Bob Villa or something – and I’m guessing Bob had a seriously structured ‘childhood’. (Just a hunch)
If you think I’m bad after I see advertising disguised as information, for products that make me a super hero in home improvement, think what kids are doing. They watch the same TV that we adults do. They watch the same news channels that 'we adults' do and they have access to the same Internet and alternative educational sources that we do. They eat the same food, they're dressed the same way, they keep the same sleeping schedules, and as scary as it is to admit, they have sex just like us. They’re taking in all the information that we do on a daily basis, but they’re taking it in faster, better, with more hormones to jumble it up, because they’re just big ‘ole sponges that suck up everything in their path. Before we were adults we were the same as the kids today, except the dude who invented Kindergarten knew this, and our parents were still practicing what they’d been taught: that if you limit your children’s exposure to worldly elements, they’ll stay kids. Forever. I know several ‘grown men’ who at 29 are no more emotionally mature than 14 year olds. Kids are us, and until they finish puberty, they’re just a foot or two shorter.
It's important for people to recognize that children aren't children anymore, and the reason behind it IS advertising, is entertainment, is lack of structure in the home, is more access, more freedom, more technology, more everything! It’s because we’re lazy with everything that we’ve achieved that to keep it all going we hardly have time to implement the structure that’s required to keep our babies babies. You have to be seriously OCD to raise a kid these days and hope that they don’t start questioning your investment choices at 11, or hacking into your bank account and buying web-cam sessions via sex.com, I mean, what kid doesn’t type ‘sex’ the first thing into google these days? Really.
The scary thing is, I don’t know if having ‘little adults’ is such a bad thing. Maybe I’m crazy, but it seems like it took some serious pioneering cojones of ‘little adults’ back in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century to get us where we are now. I’m half the mind these days to think that fostering ‘childhood’ was a mistake. I should amend this to say, a mistake from an evolutionary, top of the food chain, stand point. There’s part of me that wants to see little workhorses, and little baby chemists, and little toddler fashionistas. But that’s the part of me that’s lazy, because I’m buying into this notion that I can pump out a few of these kids, let them soak up education through some other source, and as long as they’re under my roof, they can do my dishes, and if they’re smart enough, my taxes, and I’m certain they’ll be more fashion savvy than I am, because that’s what I hear and see all over the internet, so they can buy my fall wardrobe too!
Granted, I might be in my mid-40’s when this dream comes to fruition, but by 2025, the kids we have today, sadly I predict, are going to be totally capable of these little adult day-to-day duties. And the kids we remember being in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s – GI Joes and Rainbow Brites - asking for help with long division and hoping you don’t have to stay at grandma’s house on the weekends, aren’t likely to exist – heck, they might even stop sending kids to school altogether, their homework will come over the internet with a robot tutor to instruct them and inject nutritional supplements! Yeeeaaaah, that might be an extreme, but anything’s possible at this point – I mean, who would think that the cultural practice of fostering and protecting ‘childhood’ in anyone under the age of 18 would dissipate in a puff of advertising smoke after 300 years of solid, working, functional practice? Every adult seemed pretty darn happy with the results, didn’t they? We like happy, bouncing, slow to mature, cute, innocent kids, don’t we? They’re like puppies, right? Everyone loves puppies. So why the heck did we suddenly forget how to take care of our kids? The lesson is 300 years old! What made us forget? Was it the TV? Was it the Internet? Was it the advertising of some impossible dream of a happy family, a wealthy home, and everything you ever wanted if you just buy this product? Maybe.
The next scariest part is what we’re going to do about it. After 300 years, not only have we forgotten how to raise ‘children’ to stay ‘children’ until they’re old enough to know better, but we’ve forgotten how to handle the ones who grow up so quick. What do we do with the 10 year old sexually active boys and girls? We teach sex ed in kindergarten, that’s what we do. Brilliant! Please understand me, I’m not opposed to sex ed in kindergarten, I think we need it. It’s just sad to think, I had just stepped out of childhood when I read Neil’s book, to look back and see the distance growing between me and the generation behind me was non-existent. I thought I was an adult! The kids behind me are just as savvy, maybe even smarter and quicker and they sure as heck can hold more liquor than I can and not feel the effects of a hangover! Where’s my chance to foster childhood and play with the puppies?
I guess my chance to breed will come soon enough, but by then if I have a kid, and don’t let them get on the Internet, it’ll be like holding them back. Like retarding my child. Not letting them excel to their highest sponge-like potential - to be the youngest, smartest, videogame designer on the block! Geez-louise! Do you ever feel like you just woke up from some terrible nightmare where you were damned if you do and damned if you don’t - That we’re all going somewhere in the proverbial hand basket and nobody knows the direction, knows what’s right, or has the definitive answers? Gosh, I guess the only thing to do is be aware of the trip, take note of your surroundings, and go along for the ride – at least I know the kid in me still likes to roll down the window, stick my hand out and surf the breeze. I guess I’ll just have to be sure to lay down the law, and make certain the adult in me teaches my kids how to surf safely with their childlike imagination, before I ever let them surf the net with their friends. >^,,^< - tia fix
About the writer: Tia Fix works for PrimaryAds Inc., a leading CPA Affiliate Network. She doesn’t have any kids yet, but her ovaries frequently ache at the mere sight of them. She’ll be at Ad-tech NY Nov. 7th & 9th, and enjoys working with affiliates who are 18 to 24 or even younger (they do exist), supposedly so she can stay connected with her ‘peeps’ – likely, it’s so she can type, “when I was your age…” during AIM chats.
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