Are Ads Brainwashing Your Kids?
November 7, 2018 / Alex Miller / Advertising
Do you know what your kids are looking at?:
You might need to think twice before using your phone as a means of education for your young child. Many companies design apps specifically to help educate children but they might not be as useful as you would think. While there are many apps they have great learning aspects to them, Dr. Jenny Radesky really wanted to look further into the effects of ads in education applications.
We see hundreds of adds on a daily basis. Some manage to capture our attention, but most just breeze by with no thought. But nonetheless, ads can be very distracting, especially for kids trying to learn. “You’re Kids Apps Are Crammed with Ads” written by Nellie Bowles takes a depper look into this issue and shows the research Dr. Radesky found on the dangers of ads in education apps for children 5 and under.
Dr. Radesky’s research on the issue:
Dr. Radesky’s found many issues with these education applications. There were tons of distracting banner adsat the top of almost every app. On top of the expected banner ads, there were pop up adsthat no kid of that age would be expected to know how to back out of or exit out. These ads if clicked on led to a seemingly endless deep trail of ads. To make things even worse, some games used ads as a way to reward the child with points in order to get stuff inside the app or they even prompted kids to spend real money. Her research found that an astounding 95% of education apps intended for kids 5 and under had at least one form of ads. Some of these ads even broke theF.T.C ruleson unfair and deceptive advertising…
Heart of the issue:
This is scary news for parents around the world relying on phone apps in order to help educate their young children. No parent wants to have to worry about what their kid is clicking on and looking at when they aren’t around. These ads are taking away and distracting kids from valuable learning time in their developing years. What’s the route of this issue you might ask? It brings into question the ethics we as marketers face. Is spamming toddler aged children with confusing and even intricate ads while they are trying to learn the right thing to do? I don’t think it’s the most appropriate crowd to advertise to or the appropriate means of doing so.
Many of these games require ads after a certain period of time or in order to continue playing the game the kids must watch an ad. On top of this, the apps that have the most ads are the free ones targeted for low-income families. I firmly believe that marketers need to step up and be smarter with who they market too and look at the effects they can have on people. Is hurting the future generations for a quick spam of advertising worth it? I surely don’t think so.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t let your kid use your phone to play games to learn. I am just bringing the awareness around the fact that they may not be learning as much as you would think because of being distracted by ads.
Resources
“Advertising and Marketing on the Internet: Rules of the Road.” Federal Trade Commission, 19 Mar. 2018, www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road#laws.
Bowles, Nellie. “Your Kid’s Apps Are Crammed With Ads.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/style/kids-study-apps-advertising.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FAdvertising%2Band%2BMarketing&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection.
Veres, Sonia. “What Is a Banner Ad and How Does It Work?” Bannersnack, 5 Nov. 2018, blog.bannersnack.com/beginner-guide-banner-ad/.
“What Is Pop-up Ad? – Definition from WhatIs.com.” WhatIs.com, whatis.techtarget.com/definition/pop-up-ad.