Information Literacy: Teaching Your Kids to Evaluate Advertising

In my last post, I discussed the importance of teaching your children to evaluate the information they find on the Internet. Equally important is their ability to evaluate the barrage of information that confronts them every day: Advertising!

Advertising is insidious and crops up everywhere, all the time. You can't seem to escape it. From commercials on TV and the radio, to ads in newspapers and magazines, pop-up ads and paid advertising on Web sites, billboards, posters in shop windows, toys in fast-food meals, on the fronts (and backs) of people's t-shirts, and the packaging of almost every product you buy, advertising (like poo) is everywhere! (Adam on the Discovery channel's MythsBusters once famously said "Poo is everywhere!" My kids loved it, and now apply that little chestnut whenever possible).

Since it is as ubiquitous as it is inescapable, it must be addressed. We need to teach our children how to understand it: how to decode it, evaluate the messages, and gain control over the manipulative forces.

admongo.gov is an online game sponsored by the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission. The goal is teach children to recognize and understand advertising in all of it's forms. Read a New York Times article about the game.

My ten year-old son took the game on a test drive for me. He said the game was fun, but needed a little more action. He recommends it for children ten and under. He claims that he ignored the information about advertising, but then spent the next two days pointing out ads to me. Although the game may not have all the bells and whistles of commercial computer games, it is a good teaching tool.