In a lecture by Sut Jhally, titled; “The Factory in the Living Room: How Television Exploits Its Audience“, (2007) the author suggests that advertising in children’s program is like child slave labour. He makes claims that children are being abused by the media. Big corporations like Mattel-like companies try to figure out how to get children to ‘lobby’ their parents best for the products they want to sell. This goes along with Jhally’s ideas that children rather than being watched by their parents, are being babysat by the electronics of today and are at risk for being the product of these advertising sales because TV is no longer being viewed for the shows itself, but rather the commercials and ads that are specifically for the kids watching it.
I think Jhally's views are very interesting because I always see commercials completely geared towards children. Between the music, the actors and the products, a commercial brings whatever product it is trying to sell to life and kids go crazy for it- asking their parents for the toy or the movie or whatever else it is. The problem is in this day and age parents do often sit thier kids in front of the TV, or ipod, or xbox (etc) and hire it as the babysitter. Kids are no longer playing with their siblings or having creative imagination throughout their day and unfortunately companies across the board are seeing this as an opportunity to get their products out their.
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