AlterNet: MediaCulture: So You Think You Can Raise a Brand-Free Kid?:

“I think we’re seen as consumers…how much wallet share do kids have, and how much can they influence our spending.”

Yet the push to buy doesn’t jive with the values these parents want to instill in their own kids — values like critical thinking, individuality and sustainable living.

I’m sorry but the prevailing wisdom that branding destroys kid’s minds is wrong. Bad parenting destroys, or at least hinders, childhood development. Stop blaming corporations. Branding does not prevent critical thinking, only censoring the dominant reality does. This doesn’t mean that I agree with branding to kids, but it’s the parents that need education. Talk to your kids about media– they are intelligent. But don’t block reality from them, it will only make it more attractive.

PS: I posted the above comment at Alternet where the article in question was posted, and I notice that the readers over their don’t like what I have to say (my comment is rating at 2 on a scale of 1 to 5). It occurs to me that on the surface that I may come across like a pro-media capitalist, but nothing would be further from the truth. I just no longer agree with all the fear mongering concerning media. Part of that requires a long back story and my book (out next April!) that explains more clearly why I came to this point. Regular readers of my blog will pick up on the reasons here and there.

I think the problem in general with media activism is that it adheres to a one to many mass media model of communication without acknowledging that we are in a transition to a many to many communication environment. The assumption– especially coming from the Adbuster folks– is that they believe we are injected with all this evil ideology– when the situation is far more complex. We exist in a mental ecosystem that is also composed of countervailing influences. The reason I was able to become my own person despite the total mediation of my youth was that I had parents interested in art and education, I was a punk rocker which required using media as our art, and other intangibles I can’t explain. The point is that I had a strong immune system that made the messages I was exposed to less “sticky.”

I realize the word “media educator” could sound nefarious. After all, isn’t advertising “media education” on how to be good consumers? Media educators teach media literacy, but I hate that term, because it implies that if we learned to understand media like books we would be smarter and better, and this is not true. I agree with Marshal McLuhan that current media is just an extension of the thought forms that were codified by the alphabet and printing press. So if people want to get pissed about the current state of media, consider how books have destroyed our communal way of thinking (because books make us silent, isolated experiencers of knowledge). I’m not anti-book, but all this media bashing is also not addressing the problem.

Having grown up around a lot of kids who survived hippie communes, I can say this with great confidence. Many of those kids denied McDonalds, sugar, and TV just indugled in it in more extremes until it got out of their systems. Then they became stock brokers and real estate agents. No joke. Anyhow, my message is to stop being scared of media and believe more strongly in your capacity to withstand brainwashing. Call me an optimist, but i believe in the innate intelligence of human beings to know the difference between bullshit and what is good for them, even if it’s delayed sometimes due to poor environmental conditions (i.e. closed communities, poor education, bad diet, etc).