My daughter watches television. She rarely watched it before she was three years old, and she watches no more than half an hour on most days, unless it is a movie night. We tend to value play time over television time. However, she does watch television, and occasionally this television has ads.
Now, generally we tend to avoid ads like anything. I avoid branded clothing that involves television characters, mostly because I find it irritating and unattractive. Nothing that we eat incorporates advertising at all – we are more of a scrambled egg and pancake family rather than a cereal-box in the morning family. Hence, we miss all of those ads. And when the radio is on, it’s usually on our national public radio station which happens to have no ads.
However, sometimes I like to watch shows that do involve advertising, more for the show than the advertising of course. At first, my daughter would be irritated that the show did not continue and that there were advertising breaks. Then she started to watch the ads too. And I wondered about her brain. How many ads were being imprinted in there?
Luckily, we tend to watch nature documentaries for adults so there are few child-oriented ads. We don’t get a lot of nagging for SUVs and hair conditioner. However, I wanted to teach my daughter about media literacy from a young age, and on the occasions when we watch television with ads, I endeavour to do just that.
What does media literacy for small children look like? Well, ours goes something like this. “Oh look, it’s the ads! The people who made this ad want you to buy that doll.” After the ad, we discuss whether she wanted to buy the item and why she felt that way. Do you need to buy the doll because they are telling you to? No. It’s a quick conversation, but important.
There is also the option of turning off the ads or pre-recording so that you avoid them. However, I think that a very occasional exposure to ads is useful for an older preschooler. Preschoolers are just starting to realize that other people have intentions too. It’s the perfect age to start talking about the advertising that your child will be exposed to for her entire life.