Commercialism

My nine-year-old daughter likes to listen to B101, the soft rock station that advertises “five songs in a row.” Of course, whenever you turn the station on, they always seem to be on a commercial, a point I made this morning on the car ride to school. Megan defended the station and said you only get two or three commercials in a row, but her brother Luke disagreed. “Whenever they say, ‘Five songs in a row,’ or ‘Fewer commercials’ that’s actually a commercial because they are advertising themselves. So they have a commercial saying they don’t have many commercials,” he noted triumphantly.

That’s pretty astute for a six-year-old, if I must say so myself. For all I complain about Luke’s obsession with all things Star Wars, he does have a sense of how commercialism works. In early November, for example, when B101 started playing Christmas music, Luke complained, “They’re just getting us excited about Christmas too early so we’ll go out and buy presents.”

Even though my children and I discuss commercialism, it’s still hard to fight it. Being aware of the seductiveness of Christmas music didn’t keep Luke from talking about the toys he wanted from early November until December 25. After Christmas, when he noticed there was one thing on his list that he didn’t get, he started talking about his birthday, which isn’t until April.

Now Megan is begging for a Tamagotchi, a small electronic toy that has to be fed and cared for like a pet. All her friends have them, I’ve been told, and they’re only $15. When I balked at getting her a Tamagotchi, she upped the ante and asked for an iPod.

Evidently, Tamagotchis have been lurking under the desks of her classroom for weeks, but they’ve only recently been discovered and banned by the teacher, to Megan’s great dismay. In protest, she wrote a letter to the teacher and brought it to school for her classmates to sign, an act of spunky political organizing I admire, though I’m secretly hoping she fails. I suppose that’s the danger of teaching our children to think critically and express their opinions: they’re bound to disagree with us sometimes.

I’ve tried to explain that my objections to the Tamagotchi and the iPod are not just financial. I don’t want them getting distracted at school, as I’m sure the teacher doesn’t. I also don’t want them to be isolated from their classmates at recess because they’re focused on an electronic devise, though Megan would argue that being the only kid without one is more isolating. This is the challenge of the age we’re entering, I think: how to resist peer pressure and commercialism in a way that builds community rather than isolating ourselves from community.

Finally my husband and I struck a deal with her. Since Megan has been fighting with her brother a lot lately, we suggested we’d get her a Tamagotchi—to be used only under strict guidelines—if she goes two whole weeks without hitting Luke or saying “shut up” to him. It’s amazing how effective a little bribery can be, though I’m nervous we will be opening our doors to a whole array of products we don’t really need. What will be the next gadget that all the nine-year-olds will cry they need in order to fit in? Getting Megan and Luke both iPods would probably keep them out of each other’s hair, but I’d rather have them engaging each other, and the world around them, even if it’s not always easy.