Kathryn C. Montgomery

Youth and digital media: a policy research agenda

At a time when researchers are still sorting out the complex relationship between adolescents and the mass media, the entire nature of the media system is undergoing dramatic change. The explosive growth of the Internet is ushering in a new digital media culture. Youth are embracing the new technologies much more rapidly than adults. In addition, because of their increased spending power, youth have become a valuable target market for advertisers. These trends have spurred the proliferation of Web sites and other forms of new-media content specifically designed for teens and children. The burgeoning digital marketplace has spawned a new generation of market research companies, and market research on children and youth is outpacing academic research on youth and the newer media. The emergence of this new media culture holds both promise and peril for youth. Whether the positive or negative vision of the digital future prevails will be determined, in large part, by decisions being made now and in the next few years in the halls of government and in corporate boardrooms. Research has contributed to the resolutions of several recent legislative and policy decisions in areas including television violence and the V-chip, childrens educational television programming, and privacy and marketing to children on the Web. Future research needs to be designed with the public policy agenda in mind. The academic community has much to contribute to the debates over new developments in the digital age.

Children's Media Culture in a Big Data World

Last year’s holiday shopping season featured a new generation of imaginative, interactive digital playthings for children linked to the Internet through mobile apps and other devices. LEGO’s new app-based “LEGO Fusion” prompts kids to build structures out of their physical bricks, scan and import them into the digital game, and share them with friends through an online gaming platform. A new company called Anki Drive has developed a line of artificially intelligent robotic slot cars—billed as “part toy, part video game in the real world”—enabling players to race with each other by controlling the cars through a mobile app that also keeps track of their scores. Mattel’s “Barbie Fashion Design Maker” encourages girls to design and produce clothes for their dolls by using a computer or tablet and then printing the actual clothing on special sticker-backed fabric. Among the major trends at the 2015 North American International Toy Fair were “wearable tech toys” and “smart play toys,” all fueled by Internet connectivity (Toy Fair, 2015). Marking the growing fusion of the virtual and physical worlds, these next-generation products promise to revolutionize the nature of child play, offering custom-built gadgets, unique personalized experiences and opportunities to collaborate with other children around the globe. As the technology continues to evolve, more and more of these Internetconnected toys are being designed to react to a child’s behavior in real time and “grow” with children as they become older, using software to retool a device’s functionality in order to correspond to a child’s developmental stage. The Internet has already profoundly altered the structure and operation of children’s media, spawning a proliferation of media platforms—from websites to games to mobile devices—and transforming children from passive viewers to active users who not only consume but also generate content. As the digital media system enters its third decade, it is both shaping and being shaped by Big Data. Advances in computer technology, artificial intelligence, digital communication networks, and sophisticated data processing and analysis tools have triggered a sea change in the amount, speed and variety of data that can be gathered and processed. The costs of collecting, storing and processing data have gone down as the sources for gathering data have proliferated. Because of its potential for economic transformation, Big Data is often referred to as the “oil of the information economy.” The growth of Big Data is reconfiguring all of the major institutions in our society, disrupting the structures and operations of government, commerce, health, financial Journal of Children and Media, 2015 Vol. 9, No. 2, 266–271, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2015.1021197

Balancing the Needs of Young People in the Digital Marketplace

Today’s young people are growing up in a ubiquitous global digital media culture, where mobile devices, social networks, virtual reality, interactive games, and online video have become ingrained in their personal and social experience. Members of this generation are, in many ways, living their lives online. Digital media are also playing an increasingly important role in the socialization of youth. The features of interactive media are especially appealing to young people because they tap into such key developmental needs as identity exploration, self-expression, peer relationships, and independence. As children come of age in this new digital media environment, the values, behaviors, and practices they adopt will stay with them into adulthood, helping to shape the next generation of media and its relationship to the public. The emergence of the Digital Age provides us with a unique opportunity to rethink the position of children in the media culture and in society as a whole. While in the past, the focus was primarily on seeing children and youth as passive recipients of media content, the new media system enables young people to be much more active participants and co-creators. Many youth have eagerly embraced the Web as an electronic canvas to showcase their writing, music, artwork, and other creations to the infinite audiences of cyberspace. Children, teens, and young adults are seizing a host of new digital tools to promote youth voting, orchestrate activist campaigns, and spawn social and political movements. Decisions made in the next few years—by industry and policy-makers—will have a far-reaching impact on how the twenty-first-century media system socializes young people into two key roles—as citizens and as consumers. However, as with earlier media technologies, the fulfillment of the Internet’s potential will be determined not only by technological advances but also by economic forces. When the World Wide Web was launched in the 1990s, the so-called “digital generation” was already positioned at the center of a highly commercialized youth culture, with a large infrastructure of market research firms and ad agencies closely tracking how these “early adopters” were integrating new technologies into their lives. The new business models of e-commerce, combined with the increasing buying power of children and teens, created a perfect storm for marketers. As a consequence, advertising and marketing have become a pervasive presence in today’s youth digital culture, profoundly influencing its content, services, and design.

The Digital Food Marketing Landscape: Challenges for Researchers

In 2008, when Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand wanted to re-launch two older flavors that had been discontinued in the 1980s, the company created a digital marketing campaign called “Hotel 626.” Part of a Halloween promotion to bring the defunct chips “back from the dead,” the campaign was aimed squarely at teenagers, using a variety of under-the-radar techniques to entice them to “check in” to the online hotel (which was only open from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.). By entering their names and email addresses, teens were immediately immersed in a nightmarish movie, from which they could escape only through a series of unpleasant challenges that asked them to use their webcams, microphones, and mobile phones. Live Twitter feeds enabled users to share their experiences in real time, and they were encouraged to post and share photos of themselves as they participated. A custom Facebook app prompted teens to “send a scare” to friends in their social networks. With a budget of less than In 2008, when Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand wanted to re-launch two older flavors that had been discontinued in the 1980s, the company created a digital marketing campaign called “Hotel 626.” Part of a Halloween promotion to bring the defunct chips “back from the dead,” the campaign was aimed squarely at teenagers, using a variety of under-the-radar techniques to entice them to “check in” to the online hotel (which was only open from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.). By entering their names and email addresses, teens were immediately immersed in a nightmarish movie, from which they could escape only through a series of unpleasant challenges that asked them to use their webcams, microphones, and mobile phones. Live Twitter feeds enabled users to share their experiences in real time, and they were encouraged to post and share photos of themselves as they participated. A custom Facebook app prompted teens to “send a scare” to friends in their social networks. With a budget of less than

Big Data and the transformation of food and beverage marketing: undermining efforts to reduce obesity?

1 million, the Hotel 626 campaign had a significant impact—even though the site never mentioned the name of the product itself. By the following spring, more than four million people in 136 countries had visited the site and played the game, with an average stay of 13 min. The re-launched flavors sold out, selling two million bags in just 3 weeks, and Hotel 626 was awarded the Cyber Lion at the 2009 Cannes Advertising awards—perhaps the most prestigious prize in marketing (Hotel626.com, 2010; Inspiration Room, 2009). The campaign was so successful that it spawned an even more elaborate and terrifying sequel the following year, called “Asylum 626” (Diaz, 2009). million, the Hotel 626 campaign had a significant impact—even though the site never mentioned the name of the product itself. By the following spring, more than four million people in 136 countries had visited the site and played the game, with an average stay of 13 min. The re-launched flavors sold out, selling two million bags in just 3 weeks, and Hotel 626 was awarded the Cyber Lion at the 2009 Cannes Advertising awards—perhaps the most prestigious prize in marketing (Hotel626.com, 2010; Inspiration Room, 2009). The campaign was so successful that it spawned an even more elaborate and terrifying sequel the following year, called “Asylum 626” (Diaz, 2009).

Children’s Privacy in the Big Data Era: Research Opportunities

ABSTRACT The confluence of new ways to quickly gather, analyze, and use large volumes of information – so-called ‘Big Data’ – coupled with the widespread adoption of digital devices, has transformed marketing, including food marketing. However, the effects on health of the marriage between Big Data and digital food marketing are largely un-researched and unknown. In the midst of ongoing global concern about obesity, there is a need for public health scholars to be informed of the nature and extent of Big Data’s impact on marketing in order to create new research agendas, methods, and evidence-based approaches that will be effective in today’s highly dynamic digital marketplace. In this paper, we identify six key features of this new Big Data food marketing system, explore how they depart from traditional forms of advertising, marketing, and retail operations, and offer suggestions for research strategies and public health interventions. While there is some evidence to suggest that data analytics and digital technologies could be harnessed to help address obesity and chronic disease, we argue that without intervention current trends will continue, and these techniques will be used primarily to promote junk food, sugar-sweetened beverages, and other unhealthy products, thus increasing health disparities, and worsening health outcomes.

Interactive Food and Beverage Marketing: Targeting Adolescents in the Digital Age

This article focuses on the privacy implications of advertising on social media, mobile apps, and games directed at children. Academic research on children’s privacy has primarily focused on the safety risks involved in sharing personal information on the Internet, leaving market forces (such as commercial data collection) as a less discussed aspect of children’s privacy. Yet, children’s privacy in the digital era cannot be fully understood without examining marketing practices, especially in the context of “big data.” As children increasingly consume content on an ever-expanding variety of digital devices, media and advertising industries are creating new ways to track their behaviors and target them with personalized content and marketing messages based on individual profiles. The advent of the so-called Internet of Things, with its ubiquitous sensors, is expanding these data collection and profiling practices. These trends raise serious concerns about digital dossiers that could follow young people into adulthood, affecting their access to education, employment, health care, and financial services. Although US privacy law provides some safeguards for children younger than 13 years old online, adolescents are afforded no such protections. Moreover, scholarship on children and privacy continues to lag behind the changes taking place in global media, advertising, and technology. This article proposes collaboration among researchers from a range of fields that will enable cross-disciplinary studies addressing not only the developmental issues related to different age groups but also the design of digital media platforms and the strategies used to influence young people.