My wife just told my about a conversation she had with my daughter the other day.
When our TV comes on in the living room, the channel that immediately shows defaults to the last one watched. Then from there we can choose which HDMI input or Netflix show to watch. Usually we have some external device, like an XBOX or DVD player hooked up so the screen typically comes up black prior to selecting our viewing destination.
However, one of the days last week, my daughter turned on the TV and it so happened that our ‘basic cable’ programming was on and was in the middle of showing a commercial for something. She watched several commercials and then switched it to Netflix. Some time later she asked Christy about those “short movies” she saw on the TV. They were apparently pretty interesting to her and she wanted to see some more. Christy had to explain… “No, they aren’t short (funny) movies. They are advertizing so that you will want to buy their products.”
I guess that satisfied her curiosity enough to go on to something else. But I got to thinking about it and realized that it’s true, my kids are growing up in a very different world than I did. In her case, my daughter gets nearly 100% of her entertainment from either Netflix or a few select internet sites, neither of which have commercials or advertizing. She has rarely, if ever, seen an on-screen video commercial and didn’t even know what it was.
Granted, the rest of the family are seeing ads in other places like Youtube, Hulu, and TV (still), but by the time my kids turn 10 or 12 I’m guessing they will have only seen probably 15% to 20% of the commercials that I saw growing up. I remember Saturday morning cartoons being about 50% commercials. Then again, when I was young NONE of the ads were click-able.
This reality struck me funny so I thought I would put it out there to see if anyone else had any thoughts on this trend. Are kids seeing less advertizing these days?
![111[1]](http://robproject.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/1111.jpg "111[1]")
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