Media Literacy and advertising to young people

In Stephen Abram's presentation this morning, he mentioned that Google is trying to figure out how to advertise to children. And then he said "and maybe you think that's a good thing, and maybe you don't."

Examine your own answer to that question. If you come down on the side of no, advertising to children is unethical, because they don't have the media literacy skills to differentiate between advertising and content, or because they shouldn't be turned into little consumer automatons that can't evaluate what they're being told to want, then maybe you should reconsider how you feel about having a corporate sponsor for the Summer Reading Program.

Because, in a sense, that's what we run here at ACPL: The Pizza Hut Summer Reading Program. Pizza Hut provides coupons for free food for every (or nearly every) participant in both the Children's and the Teen Summer Reading Programs. To me, that means that along with recommending books and movies and fun events to participate in at the library, we are endorsing Pizza Hut. I used to think that it would be better if we had a sponsor that had a healthier food offering, but I don't think that would satisfy me now.

I think ACPL needs to stop leaning on the crutch of corporate advertising in order to be able to tell ourselves that we're giving the kids what they want. We're not giving them what they want with Pizza Hut coupons. We're telling them what to want.

One argument against dropping Pizza Hut might be "but our stats will go down!" I say that if you're doing the right thing, you might - MIGHT - have to realign your expectations (and the expectations of the administration). But you might not. I think we could offer NO prizes AT ALL and still see 2/3 of the participation we see with prizes.

If we dropped the Pizza Hut prize, we'd definitely hear about it from parents. But it would still be the right thing. I think we should do the right thing.