Who determines privacy?

This week, in our final week of the intro to digital marketing course, we tackled the issue of privacy, particularly children's privacy, as it relates to marketing.

What we found is that all of us, including those who don't have children, agreed that the privacy of children needs to be protected. The Children's Online Protection Privacy Act was established to shelter children under the age of 13 from marketers obtaining names, ages, mailing/e-mailing addresses, unless the parent/guardian provides consent.

The youth market is big business -- each year, kids' spend $30 billion of their own money on various products. I'm sure that makes marketers' eyes pop out of their head; I know mine did! And, in addition to the amount kids spend, they influence another $150 billion in household spending. That is a huge market, so it is easy to understand why marketers want to get their hands on that information.

But what is troublesome about marketing to this group is that children under the age of 13 often have not fully developed their cognitive skills, so making sound judgments may not take place. Many adults struggle to determine fact via fiction in the various digital mediums.

In research published by the American Psychological Association, the authors noted that two important information processing tasks must take place in order for a person to achieve a mature understanding of advertising messages. He/she must first know how to tell the difference between an actual ad versus the program being watched. The study showed that kids under the age of 5 "do not consistently distinguish program from commercial content, even when program/commercial separation devices." The second cognitive task that arises is "a mature comprehension of advertising is the ability for kids to understand/recognize the persuasive intent of advertising."

The article provides some really interesting research. I recommend checking it out at: http://www.apa.org/pi/cyf/advertisingandchildren.pdf.

While I totally understand the need for marketers to understand their audience and develop products/services to serve that market, there is a very edgy line to tip toe around. Parents must decide what is right for their children, and if they believe that providing that information is okay, then marketers can obtain that information. But, in today's society where Internet crime is rampant and sexual predators are constantly lurking around cyberspace, I'm not sure that even teens (ages 13 and up)always make the best decisions on what information to give out.