how can you encourage your kids to use critical thinking when they're bombarded with advertising?

Answer 1

Great Question for today's society. I got rid of 2 televisions this year and now only have one in our very small laundry room. I also cancelled cable. Talk to them a lot and don't dance around the uncomfortable issues. Ask hard questions.

Answer 2

Just talk to them about it. Kids have to understand one basic thing about advertising: Namely, what they're told isn't always true. After this, kids are normally able to consider the advertising critically, although in some cases, especially with young kids, you have to do more than that.

Answer 3

You need to convince them first and foremost that advertising for anything is only going to talk about one side of an issue. An advertiser will never advertise bad aspects of what it's trying to sell you. Other critical thinking exercises include reading, or puzzles and discussions.

Answer 4

Fascinating question!

Take a couple of adverts and discuss with your kids the difference between:

a) What the advert is trying to say
b) What the product actually does

I'm sure your kids realise that, for example, if a man uses Lynx deodorant, scantily clad women will not automatically swarm around him. Can they find more examples like this, where the advert makes an absurd argument for effect?

Answer 5

Ooh, ooh, I know this one! Teach them about advertising theory.

Seriously, teach them about how ads are made and the psychological approaches they use. For example, cartoon characters used to promote a cereal. Fast action to promote create a sense of urgency, etc. Teach them this, and then they will actually LOOK for the red flags in commercials.

I did this with my daughter and it works great! Now she can watch TV and tell me what they're doing to "try and trick her into buying stuff". Nice.

Answer 6

You also have to instill in your child fantasy and reality. Advertising is to fantasize the mind. Reality is for that child to understand that as they grow up things are obtained by them researching and understanding what things really are and if those things are to benefit them in the long run.

Answer 7

Get this, below, to work for you and then teach it to them, then you won't have any more questions and you can come here and help us save the world:


There is some amazing science going on that many tell me they can't believe in anymore. Students say that quantum mechanics is proving God to them. I want to go on one of those websites and see what their talking about. I do know that you have to take a test on Emotional Intelligence to get a job now and they're training employees in it. Bush found an error in some scientist's math, seems he knows a lot about math. In the Conceptual Age those all fit together. They all have to do with left and right brain thinking.
The left brain, they say, is supposed to ask questions of the right brain and deal with the answers. Instead it keeps thinking about it's own answers, the same old stuff with little insight. The left brain is moved by physical feelings, sees solutions as ones of control, relates to others in competitions like chess, physical sports, and war. Is negative, says, "what is truth?', doesn't understand women, asks questions enough to tear anyone down and respects no answers and no one. It sees God as judgmental as in the Old Testament, says, 'have more self control' and cannot control itself, very well anyway. It doesn't understand the mysteries of the Far East while the mysterious China, Japan and India all understand our technology quite well. Women say that they more or less understand men. Christ implied he knew the truth. He lived in the Mid East, understanding both.
The right brain is always right, creative like the creator, polite and mild, loving, likes and understands people, works in cooperation for harmony in an orchestra, work group and family. It creates the technology, science and medical breakthroughs, literature and movies we sell around the world. It has the only product we have left, innovation and leadership. It sees our commonality, the left brain sees only differences. The right brain sees how we all can get together, atheist, Buddhist, conservative, East, and yes even men and women. As human beings we have more in common than differences. The differences seem to be invented by the left behind brain.
I may be able to anticipate some questions. I can think of these. What about the two sides on abortion? If they both could think right brained they would agree that most women don't get pregnant to have an abortion, it is a symptom of, I would think, a lack of love in the family and the world, much less 'knowing' what love is. Looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe they could agree that the problem starts and is mostly solved there. If we spent enough time on that issue it probably contains many of the troubles and answers in the world.
What about conservative Christians, what would they have to give up? Probably the same things Jesus said about the religious leaders of his day. They say that you have to acknowledge Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Well that's not so hard for the right brain. What Jesus taught was the perfect model of a functioning brain and the brain is in perfect lock step with him. It sees what he saw, reality, a common ground for sure. The left brain sees reality as the mess we have created. I heard that even tornados and hurricanes are cause by deserts, deforestation, overgrazing and the like. It can be looked up. And volcanos, earthquakes and tsunamis occur in certain places. People shouldn't live there, if they think about it. If our leaders had a world vision. I guess that is up to us to have.
It goes on and on, but he highlight is that, if we just process our thoughts as they come to us instead of getting around them, it actually works. A proven technology. Try it. The thoughts are in pictures and just need a lot of understanding, especially intuitively. I had a dream and wanted to know who was in it and I just knew. I didn't have to think about it. When I tried to look closer to see how I knew, I couldn’t see that clearly, and anyway they turned into someone else and then into a story that I 'thought' was slipping into something else. What I 'knew' when I stepped back was that it was two people I had had trouble with, the story was the problem and that I was one of the people, the principle in the dream and the problem. When we get answers that are words, there is a picture behind them which comes out as we contemplate the answer. I mean it comes out in our understanding, but perhaps even literally, to some extent. The picture from the right brain or still small voice, or God and the scriptures and the knowledge in our head or all of that, not only answers our question, but shows us where we fit into the picture, what we could do, what we shouldn't do and why, that God loves us and how the brain processes information. That's probably why we get so many answers because they all may be right.
These ideas are coming out everywhere because so much information is available and the right brain can hold so much more information in pictures and groups of pictures, symbols and their pictures. It seems to zoom in on the pictures behind the symbols in the original picture to fill us in on the detail that it already knows, because it is us, after all, a human computer with humanity. The left brain is still in control. It can ignore everything and go on about it's business of deceiving itself, but it doesn't deceive everyone else who is intuitive. Very useful in negotiations with ourselves and other despots.
That's it. hope you can use it. Pass this post on as all this will hit the news one of these days and a reporter would want to know, if it doesn't seem too 'pie in the sky' to you. But who owns the sky?

Answer 8

Be a parent.