Marketing Violence: The Special Toll on Young Children of Color

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Levin, Diane E, Carlsson-Paige, Nancy

The Impact of Toys

Toys have a very big influence on play. Some kinds of toys tend to promote higher quality play than others (Bronson, 1995; Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1990). Multipurpose and unstructured toys like clay, blocks, generic toy figures, and baby dolls, encourage play that children can control and shape to meet their individual needs. Highly structured or realistic toys, like action figures that are based on TV programs and/or movies, as well as many video games, can have the opposite effect. They can take control of play away from children. They "tell" children how to play by channeling them into playing particular themes in particular ways; and in the case of violent media-linked toys, into imitating the violent scripts they see on the screen. The problem of single-purpose, media-linked toys becomes even greater when the toys and themes they are connected to carry stereotypes about race-for instance, giving the bad guys accentuated features of non-White racial and ethnic groups.

Single-purpose toys marketed along with children's TV programs further promote imitative play. Highly realistic toys define for children how and what to play, and focus their attention on a single action, often a violent one. Unlike more open-ended toys like play dough and blocks that children can use in an endless variety of ways, these toys can easily take control away from children, making it harder for them to shape or define their play according to their own evolving needs.

Most of today's best-selling toys fit into the highly structured, media-linked categorythe kinds of toys that appeared on the scene in 1984, after children's television was deregulated. Often, these toys are linked to violent media. Advances in electronic chip technology is making it possible for increasingly sophisticated toys that speak violent phrases and perform violent actions at the push of a button or the command of a child's voice. Many of the toys-such as those linked to professional wrestling and The Incredible Hulk and Terminator movies-have age recommendations for much younger children than the age ratings of the media to which they are linked (Levin & Linn, 2004; Levin & Rosenquest, 2001; Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment, 2003).

The highly lucrative practice of marketing media-linked toys of violence to children can make it harder for children to break free of the power of the toys' violent messages and use their play to work through the issues about violence that would help them heal. In this way, the toys can amplify the lessons about violence children learn from the violence they see on the screen. Also, parents who work hard to keep these toys from their children's playrooms, find that their presence in the commercial childhood culture is so pervasive that their children are exposed despite their best efforts (Carlsson-Paige & Levin, 1990).

ENDANGERED PLAY: SPECIAL PROBLEMS FOR DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR

It is not just harmful lessons about violence that children learn when they lose control of their play (Levin, 1996). There are serious implications for all aspects of their learning and development. First, their cognitive development and acquisition of basic skills can be jeopardized because the very skills they develop through healthy play are important prerequisites for successful mastery of academic content.