The Impact of Consumer Culture on Pediatric Occupations and Health

Written by Madelyn Yoo, OTR/L

Introduction

The holiday shopping season is among us, filled with Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, unending advertisements for “perfect gifts”, and an overall air of quintessential American consumerism. Unsurprisingly, wasteful consumer practices contribute to ecological destruction by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable energy use, and land-use changes (Carlisle et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2023), all of which circle back to impact human occupation. Perhaps less known, the United States ranks the lowest in terms of children’s general well-being despite being an “economically advanced nation”, bringing our characteristic consumer culture into question (among many other things) ( Sanders, 2020 p. 104). With movements like “de-influencing” and “under-consumption” circulating on social media, there is a sense that young people (including parents!) recognize the impact, both psychologically and environmentally, of our consumer culture and are looking for ways to enact change. As a pediatric occupational therapist, I am fascinated by the influence of such macro-level forces on children’s occupations and what we can do to support their development (and the environment!).

In the United States, the effort to capitalize on children’s attention and desire is enormous.

• The childhood marketing sector spends $130 billion annually in targeting campaigns to capture children’s attention (Hill, 2011).

• The average young person grows up seeing 13,000-30,000 advertisements on television each year, not including those in print, movies, video games, school, or social media (Lapierre et al., 2017).

• Annual social media advertising is projected to rise from $234.14 to $345.73 billion by 2029 (Statista, 2024), promoting consumerist behavior in new innovative ways (Kowalewicz, 2022).

• In the United States, there is far less regulation in the advertising sector compared to countries like Sweden and Norway, where marketing to children younger than thirteen is banned (Linn, 2010).

• Legally, U.S. companies are forbidden from collecting data on children younger than thirteen, but evidence suggests that marketers do not heed these rules amidst supposed “self-regulation” (Lapierre et al., 2017).

• Marketers hire child psychologists and experts to maximize understanding of the youth market despite medically recognized threats of poorly regulated advertising on child development (Hill, 2011; Wilcox, 2004).

Impact of Consumer Culture on Children’s Occupations

Childhood consumption and its effect on health is an underexplored subject (Atkinson et al., 2015; Brady et al., 2015). However, there is growing concern with children’s mental health and lifestyle related conditions in relation to consumerism (Brady et al., 2015; Schor, 2004). Though none of this evidence emerged from occupational science literature, findings demonstrate the negative impact on children’s occupational well-being. The following are occupations (per the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework 4th Edition) and examples of ways in which consumer culture has influenced them (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2020).

Play

• 97% of American children younger than 6 years old own something that features an image based on media characters (Linn, 2010). With familiar characters as objects of play, children often mimic dialogue and actions associated with these characters rather than engage in creative, self-generated pretend play (Lim, 2015; Sanders, 2020).

• ​​In the virtual realm, branded content appears in “advergaming”, or web-based games that revolve around a product, and smartphone games, which are presented as free but later require players to spend money or sign up for other goods or services to continue (Brook, 2017). In this format, consumption is a prerequisite for play participation.

Leisure

• On average, children ages 8-12 spend 4-6 hours viewing a screen each day (American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2022), while teens spend 4.8 hours per day on social media (Rothwell, 2023).

• In a study investigating the impacts of screen time and vision, authors found that the more time participants (students ages 10-17) spent online, the more likely they were to experience eye strain and convergence insufficiency (https://www.aao.org/newsroom/news-releases/detail/research-virtual-school-can-harm-childrens-vision).

Social Participation

• Children are often parented using consumerist strategies such as use of monetary allowances or shopping excursions as rewards and withholding goods as punishment (John, 1999; Richins, 2017). 

• Research has found strong associations between increased levels of consumer involvement and poorer relationships with parents among children (Sanders, 2020).

• In one ethnographic study, Lim (2015) found that 4 and 5 year-old children in Singapore reproduced values of highly consumerist culture via their social interactions. Discussions among children involved what material items they had with them at school, many with licensed imagery (stickers, backpacks, water bottles), as well as what they had at home (DVD titles or books, toys, hair accessories, parents’ cars).

ADLs: Personal Hygiene & Grooming

• Pediatric dermatologists have reported cases in children as young as 8 with rashes and allergic contact dermatitis resulting from repeated exposure to active ingredients (i.e. chemical exfoliants) and layering of excess skin care products in pursuit of Instagram- and TikTok- inspired trends (Godoy, 2024).

• Many popular “get ready with me videos” include links to the e-commerce TikTok shop, which does not include warning labels to products that may be harmful for children by TikTok or the Food and Drug Administration (Sternlicht, 2024).

Health Management: Social and Emotional Health Promotion and Maintenance

• In consumer culture, identity construction orbits around consumptive experiences. Though people, especially young people, may believe they are engaging in self-expression through consumption, they are rather developing, monitoring, and molding their identities to unrealistic ideals perpetuated through advertising (Hill, 2011).

• One study found that children who had more difficulty suppressing joy/happiness (i.e., poor emotional regulation) were more likely to ask their parents for consumer goods (Lapierre, 2016). In addition, these children were more likely to argue with parents about these purchases. 

What Do We Do About It?

As occupational therapy practitioners, especially those of us working in pediatrics, our aim is to promote the health and well-being of our clients. Thus, we can consider creative strategies to challenge conventions of consumer culture. 

1. Challenge conventions of consumerism for children.

1. Teaching children the difference between needs versus wants, emphasizing that more consumer goods does not equate more happiness. (See an example lesson plan from PBS: https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/lpsc10.sci.life.lp_needwant/needs-vs-wants/).

2. Consider use of non-material rewards during sessions (See the following list from a Developmental Therapist: https://www.yourmodernfamily.com/non-toy-rewards/). This can even include preferred activities the child enjoys. You might recognize a child is interested in an activity and start a list of these activities with them. You can refer to them later when it is time for a break or reward so they have choices!

3. Promoting emotional regulation and impulse control.

2. Promote civic engagement and education among children and youth.

1. Teach children about the function of advertising and the strategies used (See an example lesson plan from the Federal Trade Commission: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/Admongo/lesson-plan-1.html#:~:text=Tell%20students%20that%20ads%20are,company%20responsible%20for%20the%20ad).

2. When child-led conversations around eco-anxiety arise, discuss ideas on ways to take action with them and how the problem connects with consumerism (Sheldon-Dean, 2024). Taking action to solve a problem is empowering. 

3. Participate in local advocacy as a health care provider.

1. Engage in groups like Consumer Action, a non-profit organization that empowers consumers to assert their rights in the free market. Recently this group endorsed the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), a bipartisan legislation that would update data privacy rules to better protect children and teens (Consumer Action, 2023).

2. Connect interested families with relevant organizations. For example, if a family expresses concerns with climate but is unsure where to start, introduce organizations like Climate Action Families whose mission is to build collective power in the intergenerational climate justice movement (Climate Action Families, n.d.).

Although such individual and community level actions are only one piece of the solution, framing such strategies as health-promoting can begin to shift hegemonic ideas of consumerism for the benefit of our clients and the planet.

References

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American Occupational Therapy Association. (2020). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process (4th ed.). American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(Suppl. 2), 7412410010. https://doi. org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74S2001

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