“Generation y” is a gold mine for marketing for companies, according to Naomi Rockler-Gladen, in her article Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class. Much concern is expressed for this generation, because very few of them care that companies are trying to manipulate and use them. In fact, for many of them, they don't understand why it's a bad thing for there to be so much advertising around people all of the time. What these students fail to realize, is that companies are basically teaching people not to care about where or what they shop for. These students believe that when you buy a coffee from starbuks, you are simply buying a good mocha. In reality, these companies are influencing society “politically, economically, and ideologically.”
One example to illustrate this point is seen in the tv shows that many people from generation y remember watching as kids, such as Strawberry Shortcake, He-Man, and Care Bears. First one might think that they're just tv shows. However, these tv shows were created as an advertizement for toys. In order to get little girls to want to buy a stuffed bear, they made a cartoon. Other examples include advertizements in high schools and brand logos on clothing. Yet, generation y still has a hard time understanding why this could be a bad thing. Yet, if you were to ask them to give examples of how companies have “screwed them over,” they would be able to cite specific examples, such as prices of books and large insurance costs. What this generation needs to learn is these companies receive their power by individuals buying/using their product/service. And they get their customers from their advertizing. Once they understand this, media activists and generation y can work together to overcome it.
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