Children and tweens have become an increasingly attractive audience to marketers as their purchase potential has increased (it seems exponentially) over the past decades. Yes it is true, I will admit to owning more Barbies than any one girl could possible need but I don’t think that the sum of their cost would come anywhere near the price of the iPod hanging out of the pocket of the kid next to me on the subway. Kids can get there parents to shell out dough at an amazing rate (and yes, there are a few teens who actually make the cash they spend).
An article in Sunday’s New York Times discussed the increasing popularity of internet based games for children. Most of these games are community based and let kids interact with children their own age virtually chatting, playing, working, shopping, taking care of pets (all the things kids in the past were forced to do in the boring real world. Some of the more popular sites are Club Penguin (a money minded protagonist of this online community of cutesy characters is featured in this article) and Webkinz which can be accessed by kids who buy the real life stuffed animal for one year (at which point the need to buy a new virtual pet). Both of these services charge a fee in different ways, Club Penguin monthly and Webkinz yearly. There is no problem with this sort of membership fee in my eyes. However, when a kid is asking his parent to shell out $19.95 so he can buy a virtual amulet for the game Dragon Amulet, I think things have gone to far.
I guess this virtual amulet could be thought of as the equivalent to a Barbie convertible or the newest accessory for a BMX bike but I see one major difference. The Barbie convertible gets the kid to use his or her imagination, the super sweet new brakes for the bike get the kid excited about going out and cruising around with his friends. What does the amulet do? It causes elitism in an online community (not everyone can afford these kinds of perks in the virtual gaming world) and it continues to keep the kid indoors enjoying a pre-imagined world.
Sure, kids are going to consume the culture of technology inevitably and they will even be subject to subtle advertising techniques that we could never even dream of being hit with as kids but they are becoming smart consumers and aware of these problems. I don’t think that kids playing games online is a problem as long as it doesn’t become their primary social outlet. I guess it is a matter of knowing when to draw the line and being aware of your children’s gaming habits and keep a healthy balance between indoor/outdoor, virtual/real, social/solo activities. Hell get those kids out there blowing up G.I. Joes every once in a while, keep them creative.
It’s also important to keep a close eye on credit cards since it seems that there soon will be a “Jr.” version of what’s in mommy and daddy’s wallet. Does anyone out there agree that there should be a limit to what an online game is allowed to ask kids to spend? Monthly and yearly fees are fine within reason but purchases for items with real, not virtual cash earned within the game, do not seem fair or reasonable. What do you think?
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