Back to Ad-Sponsored School | Psychology Today

Have you ever noticed your child singing a car insurance company slogan? Or perhaps joking using word-for-word lines from an upcoming movie with their online classmates? Or maybe even startling you with a perfect recollection of new menu items for a restaurant neither of you has visited in months? When asked where they learned such things, the answer may surprise you—school!

Because of COVID-19, most of the country’s schools are now online, whether operated by a district or in partnership with a university. It is a challenging time for teachers who were trained to teach in a “normal” classroom vs. Zoom, Webex, or Microsoft Teams. To keep students engaged, many teachers are incorporating streaming videos in their courses to help increase student engagement.

Content designed to supplement learning experiences often sits behind advertising walls. The reason non-subscription content is “free” to the user is that it is paid for by advertising. In the case of teachers who rely on free content, today’s online students have to sit through 15-30 seconds of targeted ads before an assigned video starts.

Though the online learning environment is certainly a new world for most schools, advertising and marketing in the education setting is nothing new—think Box Tops, Colgate-sponsored dental brochures, sponsored educational materials, and sports drink sponsored athletic equipment. For parents with young children in the virtual classroom environment, understanding the effects that advertising can have on young minds helps determine the appropriate actions to take.

Understand the effect of advertising on children. Children, especially those under age 12, have only a limited development of persuasion knowledge (i.e., the ability to recognize that a message is trying to affect their opinion). Children, and in fact many adults, do not know the difference between entertainment (designed for fun) and advertising (designed for persuasion). In my research, I have long documented that the lines between advertising and entertainment are blurred into what is termed advertainment, which is a mixing of the two forms that can be indistinguishable to the untrained eye. For example, studies, including my own, have found that advertisements by paid celebrities designed to look like an organic endorsement of a brand or product can boost the credibility of the brand association with the celebrity, while making it difficult for consumers to see that it’s a paid advertisement. Other studies have shown that the advertising woven seamlessly into the content of media such as music videos, TV shows, or streaming content can also make it difficult to view it with the same amount of skepticism that might accompany a traditional advertisement.

Therein lies the power of subtle persuasion—the more the viewer connects with the character or person in the ad, the more they become immersed in the story, and the more they believe what they see and hear in that story. For young children, who are already more vulnerable to advertainment, subtle messaging may have an even more dramatic impact.

Be aware. Ask your child what videos they watched today. Sit with them to check out some of the context yourself. You may end-up in awe at the creative talent of Mr. Nicky’s music videos, set to modern tunes like Uptown Funk or Thrift Shop to teach kids about Mesopotamia or Ancient Egypt. But you might start to wonder who is paying these Educators/YouTubers who are developing such great tutorials for all grades from K to 12th! Or you might be alerted to the types of commercials your child may be exposed to day-in and day-out (advertisers often rely on multiple exposures). If that is the case….

Make advertising a teachable moment. Helping kids develop media and advertising literacy early may be beneficial to them in the long-run as they grow and consume more media. The American Psychological Association recommends incorporating these literacy programs as early as third grade. Research shows that literacy programs are especially effective when they challenge kids to think like advertisers and to consider what the purpose of an ad is, how it was created, and how and why it so compelling. The best technique to teach kids about advertising is to have them develop their own ad and think about how to make their hypothetical message compelling. When persuasion knowledge is activated (that is when you know it is an ad you are watching and not purely entertainment) individuals are better able to defend themselves against persuasion attempts, and ultimately less likely to be influenced. This is also part of the reason that many researchers and consumer advocates have called for advertising messages to be disclosed as such so that viewers, parents, and children alike recognize it for what it is: a paid-for message.

Help children learn about advertising in a healthy way. If the amount of sponsored videos seems excessive, it might be time to express your concern with your child’s school to determine whether the channels being assigned are appropriate and whether alternate sources of information are available. For those who can afford it, subscriptions to online platforms can eliminate ads altogether (e.g., services like YouTube Premium which allow access to content without the ads). Many platforms have taken steps to lessen the number of ads that accompany videos meant for children. However, this solution may not cover all assigned content. In some cases, it may be necessary for the school to intervene and determine if the amount of online streaming content is appropriate or to ensure that the content does not sit behind advertising walls, but is incorporated into the school’s Learning Platform, commercial-free.

Children are especially vulnerable to the persuasive effects of advertising as their brains are still developing and they are therefore more susceptible to impulsive behavior. By understanding the psychology behind how children consume media and when and why they are served advertisements, we can facilitate conversations early with young minds about media, educate them about the business models behind advertising-sponsored content, so they will know how to consume it in a safe and sustainable way, and how much is too much.