My first OP-ED draft

Untitled (for now)

“More games, more toys, oh boy!” shouts the five year old boy sitting on a swing with the happiest face on Earth. What he does not know, is exactly the problem, the fact that he is being watched over national TV by more than just 30 million other kids.

As time passes, our culture has degenerated into a planet full of meaningless consumerisms. Not surprising at all, the main victims are the weakest and most vulnerable ones; the children, and here is where the big question arises; has the behavior of them changed since the work of media and consumerism reacted on them?

This is undoubtly an easy one.

Toy’s R Us´s campaign “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid” has been playing with children’s minds for too long now. It is time that big companies start developing new strategies avoiding consumerism, to get our kids attention. Making a sweet five-year-old girl sing “They got the best for so much less”, is not going to get anybody anywhere.

Lets face it; children today are overexposed to a growing number of commercial messages, which affect the way the play, learn and most importantly, behave. In other words, commercial world is actually corrupting childhood. Yet, what does all this mean for a child itself?

Not long ago in West Bengal, a 14-year-old teen murdered his ten-year-old friend because she refused to part with her iPod. This is clearly a murder that we would not have been able to see five years ago, but as cultures all over the world develop, not especially in a positive way, scenarios like this become more common, and sadly more normal.

This situation is for sure not the first one in these days societies, horrible moments likes this have become extremely common in high-class families, I would say TO common.

There is no doubt about it; children change with the influence of media, in a bad way. Subliminal messages fill the screen everyday, creating humans that just want one thing; more.

But we are not the wisest ones; we are actually the ones being the most put-upon, why? Because every time our children make a scene, we give them what they want. In other words; yes. We are overindulging our children.

So be aware. Your kid saw it, now he also thinks it, and as the little blond girl with tails would say: “They got million toys at Toys R Us that I can play with”, and one day, he also will.