Are you having a hard time explaining how many works: why people are poor, how that YouTuber has a ton of toys but they your kids don’t, or why your kids should save their VBucks?
Advertising
Teaching kids to pinpoint advertisements and understand when they want something just because a commercial tells them they want it is an ongoing conversation. This extends nicely to YouTube and deciphering when a favorite gamer has a sponsor or advertisement in their videos. It also helps when we’re in Target and they “want” something but can mostly step back and consider why they want it to make better purchasing choices. As someone who struggles with retail therapy myself, I must work on my own understanding at the same time.
By giving our kids the tools to think critically about marketing at any age, they see advertisements more objectively. They are less likely to be taken in by the hypnotic commercials and half-hour-long ads for toys. Even if they are taken in, it’s easier to pull them out of the trance. It can be challenging, but every conversation opens their minds to identify how media affects their young brains, creating an ongoing dialogue regarding what we do and don’t want them to consume.
Conversations to Have
- Advertisements don’t want to help you, they want to sell to you. Their job is to sell as much of their product as possible, so they convince you that you NEED it.
- The people in advertisements are being paid to sell this product to you. You might love that actor or YouTuber, and sometimes they do use the product. They still are getting paid to tell you that you need it.
- If you feel like you want something from an ad, consider whether or not you ever thought you wanted it before you saw it. One way to track this is to take a photo. When we want something, I take a photo and add it to a “Birthday” or “Holidays” album. I either reference it when the grandparents ask what the kids want, or I never look at it again.
- Advertisers have to make you feel bad about yourself and make you feel like you have a problem so that they can present their product as the solution. I still go through this when I see an ad for a planner. My life will feel less hectic if I can simply organize it differently, right? Posing their product as your solution helps you avoid real problems. In my case, it’s too many commitments, not the paper on which I track them.
- They need to make you feel like you are the only person who doesn’t have their product. Then you will think you must get that item to keep up everyone else.
- Involve them in your budgeting. This is hard to keep up, and I want to acknowledge that as much as I try, I am not consistent. But I love involving the kids in our budgets when it comes up. It can start with things you will buy but need to make a choice: you can either get fries or an ice cream, we don’t have the money for both. When they get a gift card as a present, we go around the store and do the math together. It takes time (once it took my youngest an hour to spend $25), and can make money tangible for them. When we go food shopping, I tell them how much is in our food budget and we do the math as we go along to see how close we can get.
Advertising and its impact on our lives is not a one-and-done conversation. If you can help your children understand why advertising exists, how consumerism and fast fashion hurt our earth, and the value of money and budgeting, that’s a good start.
How Video Games Help Teach Kids About Money and Math
A learning aspect of Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Party, and many more games is that you must earn a certain number of points, coins, etc. before purchasing items in-game that give you more powers or costumes, whatever the case may be.
I couldn’t get my kids to watch a Zoom math class, yet also couldn’t keep them away from an online course called “Mario Math,” which used characters and concepts from the Super Mario world to help them understand ways of approaching math and problem-solving that make their in-classroom learning better today.
In-Game Currency
The Economy of Roblox is complicated and harried. The short of it is that players cannot play more than a basic aspect of games without Robux, and developers often pay their labor in Robux, plus it costs Robux to advertise your game so that players even see it to play it — and make you money, etc., etc. That is why I use the economies as just one way to evaluate Roblox games.
Poverty, or Why Did Tiny Tim Die?
“Wait,” my 7-year-old sits up and looks me in the eye. “Did Tiny Tim die?”
We’re watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol, and the reality of a teary Mickey Mouse holding a tiny crutch hits my son. Hard.
“Yes,” I say as plainly as possible. “He died.”
“Why?”
But explaining all the reasons why Tiny Tim died is like explaining why poverty itself exists. I settled on describing how there were a lot of diseases at that time that people didn’t know how to cure, but sometimes, with expensive treatments, ailments could be lessened or reversed. If you are poor, you didn’t have access to the right medicine.
That was just a band-aid explanation, though, and we both knew it.
Why is That Man Holding a Sign in the Street?
A few weeks earlier, we were at a stop light known for people holding signs and asking for money. Our family had just repatriated to the United States; since the kids were very young when we lived overseas, everything they saw in the US felt brand new.
Child: “Why is that man holding a sign?”
Me: “He needs money. He might be homeless, which means he doesn’t have a place to live.”
“So he’ll use that money to get a place to live?”
“No, that money will probably buy him something to eat. A place to live costs a lot more money than anyone can get from a street corner.”
“He doesn’t have a home? Where does he sleep?”
“Some people sleep on the street, or in a shelter that helps homeless people.”
“On the street? That doesn’t sound safe. Why can’t he just get money?”
“You need a job to get money. You don’t usually ‘get’ money, you aren’t just ‘given’ enough money to live. You need to make money by having a job.” (Unless you’re born rich, but we’ll get to that eventually.)
“Oh, well, they should get a job then. That would fix it.”
“It can be very hard to get a job. Bosses need to see that you have had a job recently. You need clean clothes to go on an interview or even pick up an application to fill out. The company you want to work for would want you to be clean and had a bath or shower that day. Plus most applications — the papers you fill to try to get a job — they’re all online now. And if you don’t have a job or a home, you probably don’t have a computer with internet access. If you’re lucky, you have a phone number you can use. But how can a job get in touch with you if they don’t have a way to reach you? A poor person can use the computers at the library, but they can’t check those very often, assuming they live close to one.”
“What about staying with a friend or their mommy?”
“Not everyone has a family, or they don’t get along with their family. Not all friends are able to help because they don’t have enough space or money themselves to give someone a home.”
Where Does Money Come From?
“Can’t they just get money from their phone?”
“So, you normally see me pay for something with my phone. But that isn’t an endless supply of money. When I take jobs, I agree to work for a certain amount. The company I work for then pays me — or, more likely, they put the money directly into my bank account. Every time you see me tap my phone or use my bank card, I agree that the store can take money out of my bank account to buy what I want to buy. My bank can give my money to the store. That money is then subtracted from the money in the bank account.
This is why you see Daddy and I sit down every week, go through every purchase we make, and look ahead to what bills we need to pay in the future. We only have the money in our bank account to spend.”
We talk about [poverty] all the time. I try to impress upon them all the various levels of privilege/luck that exist in our area, country, the world…. And we’ve talked about how colonization and slavery, etc have basically given immense privilege to some while exploiting others and making it impossible for them to get out of poverty. I have also been open about the different choices their father and I made over time, and how that affects our personal income. And, finally, I give them a small allowance and their grandparents gift them money at times, so they get a sense of what it takes to save up, etc.
Grace is a writer in Vermont.
They’re 9 and 6 now and I see this as an ongoing conversation that will get more detailed over time.”
Banks Are a Business
Child: “So the poor people can just get the money from their bank account!”
Me: “Believe it or not, it costs money to make money. To have a bank account, you need to keep money in it and have an address. And if you accidentally spend more money than you have in your bank account, the bank charges you more. And you can’t afford to pay that back at all, they continue to charge you fees, close your account, or send all the money you owe them to a collections agency or all of those things.”
“But if you don’t have money, why would the bank charge you more? That isn’t nice.”
“A bank is a business. They have to make money to stay in business. This is one of the ways they make money, or at least don’t lose money. Some laws are being passed to eliminate these overdraft fees, but not everywhere. “
“Well, they should just help people if they need help.”
“We may think so, but a business’s primary purpose isn’t to help people and make money. There are companies set up to help people, like the homeless shelters I mentioned before, but they are usually charities or not-for-profits.”
They typically nod and we let the information sink in. Then comes the kicker:
“Why do we need money? Why can’t we give people everything they need? If I were the ruler of our world, I would just let everyone have what they need.”
“That’s a very nice idea. I hope that you can one day.”
“Why don’t businesses help more people if they have the money?”
“Here in the US, we live under capitalism. That means that our economy is built around people making money, not necessarily on how to help the most people.”
Explaining Capitalism? That’s a whole other article.
Photo/Image Credit: Cindy Marie Jenkins, Canva
Sources:
- Dupaix, Madison, “How to Define and Explain the Economy to Kids,” The Balance, 24 March 2002, HTTPS://WWW.THEBALANCEMONEY.COM/ECONOMY-DEFINITION-2085358
- https://outthinkmedia.com/2023/12/22/why-did-tiny-tim-die-explaining-poverty-to-kids/