For eons kids have enjoyed dressing up and pretending to be adults. If girls would slip into their mothers’ high heels and paint their lips red, boys loved to play strict fathers and rugged bikers. But today, adults are dressing up kids like grown ups and making them speak things which are age inappropriate. If we take a look at recent advertisements, one sees that ad filmmakers are exploiting the sweet girl-boy relationship in a way that looks subtle and harmless on the surface but has a penetrating effect on the impressionable minds of the ever-so-curious kids. In a food-joint ad, a small boy declares, “Girlfriends bahut demanding hoti hain”, while in an ad to sell motorbikes, another boy is shown impressing a girl by the bike he rides.
Manisha Lakhe, who has written scripts for ad films, says that ads today tell children that it is okay to make gender discriminating remarks and to have girlfriends/boyfriends. She says, “It is as bad as mothers pushing kids in America to take part in beauty pageants. If so called ‘cute’ remarks from kids can generate the hype, in the long run no one cares what impact ads have on kids. They just look at the ‘wow’ factor.”
Psychologists say that children often tend to misinterpret the messages conveyed in commercials. They overlook the positive side and concentrate more on the negatives.
Kids these days are free to watch anything that comes on TV. They have the luxury of the Internet, which is an instant source of information. Dr Jitendra Nagpal blames the explosion of information and irresponsible behaviour shown by “adults”. “I don’t understand the need to have children in a bike ad. Recently a 13-year-old girl was sent to me by her school for counseling. She had sex with her classmate and asked the principal, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ The hyper-awareness is largely accountable for the unnecessary curiosity generated among kids. Let them grow in tandem with nature,” he says.
Children are the most susceptible to advertising as their minds are immature. “The content in the so-called non-toxic ads too generate curiosity and so the hormones become active faster. Whereas mentally they are ill-equipped to handle the changes. There should be a moral responsibility of the mass media and they should self-regulate and not spoil innocent minds,” says Shashank Awasthy, a teacher.