Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
November 2005

Children’s Toys Today: Getting Older Younger

We’re moving into the holiday season, in which many families celebrate dates of religious importance and retailers celebrate the increased sales that arise from the traditions that are a part of the season. It is disappointing, perhaps especially during this time of year, the degree to which some of the worst aspects of our current popular culture are found among the toys and games that retailers offer for children.

The most obvious of this negative influence can be seen in the sexualizing of the stuff - toys, clothing, and books -- of childhood. In recent years, we’ve witnessed a drastic increase in overtly sexual material in almost every aspect of popular culture, which has spilled over into that of teenagers and even children. In part, this sexualizing of children’s culture is due simply to the omnipresence of increasingly sexually graphic media in people’s lives today. In many homes, the television is on almost around the clock. Sexually suggestive billboards, ads plastered on the sides of city buses, it’s everywhere.

Drawing from an American Academy of Pediatrics report published last year, The Gazette, of Montreal, Canada, reported on November 7, 2005, on the relationship between sexualized media and age compression, which as been described as “children getting older younger” in a May, 2005, article in TD Monthly, which is a trade magazine for the toy and game industry.

"Watching sex on TV predicts and may hasten adolescent sexual initiation," the AAP study concluded, contributing to the rise of what's been termed "age compression," according to the Gazette report.

“When examining the sexual activity and TV viewing habits of 1,792 adolescents age 12 to 17,” continued the Gazette, citing a study done by the RAND Corporation, “researchers found that the young people who watch the most sexual content acted older than their years. For example, "a 12-year-old girl at the highest levels of exposure (to sexual content on TV) behaved like a 14- or 15-year-old at the lowest levels (of TV viewing)."”

And, now, we see this age compression and sexualization reaching deeply into an age group that most of us would still consider to be children, ages 5 to 9. Aggressive marketing plays an important role in the sexualizing of children’s playthings, wardrobes and literature. Age compression and aggressive marketing, while they are - on one level -- separate issues, often operate together, and have become locked into a sort of chicken or egg type relationship, with many toy makers citing age compression as a problem, and using aggressive marketing, often of products that accelerate age compression, as a solution to falling profits.

A Washington Post article from February 17, 2002, describes age compression as “a deep worry to the industry because it has shrunk the market for baby dolls, action figures and other mainstays.” According to the Washington Post, “the trend has been so damaging to their industry [toy manufacturers] that it has been impossible to ignore.”

“The toy age is actually peaking these days at 8, and the toy industry is really wondering how to deal with that,” said Maria Weiskott, editor of Playthings magazine, as quoted by the Washington Post.

“Age compression is something we're stuck with,” said John Taylor, an analyst with Arcadia Investments who follows the toy industry, according to the Washington Post article. “It's the core challenge facing the industry.”

Many toy manufacturers respond to the age compression challenge to their profit margin with the aggressive marketing of toys and other products based upon those clearly meant for older children and adults. The Canadian Media Awareness Network points out, citing a report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, that the marketing to young children of “toys that are based on restricted movies and Mature rated video games is a common industry practice” and that often “action toys, based on characters from video games rated Teen and Mature, were labeled suitable for children (sometimes as young as 4 or 5 years old).”

The current market share struggle between Barbie and the Bratz dolls offers insight into how age compression reaches into the younger age groups, bringing sexualized toys and concepts to a seemingly ever-younger group of children. In years past, Barbie reigned as queen of the 6- to 10-year-old girl demographic. Now, she’s been pretty much relegated to preschoolers, aged between 3 and 5 years old. A November 17, 2005, story in the Washington Post reports that Toys R Us “predicts that Mattel's shimmering doll Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (based on the best-selling DVD, of course) will be one of the top new toys for children ages 2 to 4.”

The Bratz have moved into the demographic territory that Barbie used to rule, although they are supposedly meant for tweens. Arriving on the toy scene in 2001, these oddly proportioned dolls radiate urban, MTV-style chic, sporting skin baring fashions on lithely almost-adolescent bodies and heavy make-up on their large eyes and sultry-sexy lips.

"I love the toy business because it has such sex appeal," said Isaac Larian, founder of MGA Entertainment, Inc., maker of the Bratz, according to a May 2, 2005, Business Week article. "It's like getting hooked on drugs." Business Week reported “the Bratz dolls, with their big eyes and skimpy clothes, have grown into a billion-dollar franchise.”

Playing into age compression and using aggressive marketing strategies to court young girls is part of what has made the Bratz so profitable for their creator. Barely dressed pop star divas, hip-hop’s hard, urban bling-bling styles, and, most recently, today’s glamour-girl bands exert a clear influence on the design of these little dolls and their wardrobes and accessories, which are often delivered into little hands with an assortment of associated products, specifically designed for girls far younger than the tweens age group that the dolls were theoretically made for.

Among these associated, branded products is the Bratz Superstylin’ Funktivity Jumbo Color Book written, according to Amazon.com, at a reading level of 4 to 8 years of age. Other Bratz titles in the 4- to 8-year old reading level category include Sasha: Hip Hop Hot, Makin’ It Up (L’il Bratz), which comes with 4 shades of lipstick and some body glitter, and School Time Style (L’il Bratz). In addition to an unnatural and unhealthy focus on how they look, these books offer flirting advice to little girls barely in elementary school, tainting what should be natural camaraderie between children. That, in May of 2003, McDonald’s offered Bratz themed Happy Meals attests to their transformation from an almost teenage girl’s collectors item to little girl’s plaything.

Age compression has touched almost every aspect of young children’s lives. You can see the influence not only in the selection of toys and games on the market, but also in books for young children that broach adult topics, such as homosexual relationships, and in television programs and movies. Not even Dr. Suess could avoid being tainted with age inappropriate material when the Cat In The Hat made it to the big screen. You can see it on the clothing racks in the little girls’ department of almost any clothing retailer.

Childhood is a period of learning the skills that will help them to create fulfilling and happy lives in their adulthood. Age compression damages that process. For example, the typical phase of social development for elementary school aged children is (or, at least it used to be) developing intimacy skills, such as communication and negotiation, most often in same sex friendships.

These skills are absolutely necessary to the satisfying romantic relationships of adulthood. Encouraging flirting and precocious opposite sex associations - other than the natural friendships that arise between boys and girls -- directs the attention away from the development of the very skills essential to happy and long lasting relationships in adulthood. Children need childhood and parents need to protect it.

The holiday season, with its celebration of religion and family, often calls back our own memories of childhood. That makes this part of the year the perfect time to reflect upon the importance of seeing to it that our own children are not rushed out of their childhood and to renew our commitment to making the best choices for our children as we help them to develop the skills they’ll need to make their own healthy choices and to grow up to be strong, capable and happy adults.