[Comments are now closed on this entry 8/18/2006]
Beware the messages sent to our kids. No matter how hard we try to protect them and educate them, they still can get hold of the wrong message through the back door.
Donna warns today about Noggin’s (parent company Viacom) incredibly tasteless and inappropriate new online game, called “The Hookup”, which they’re marketing to pre-teen girls (yes, you read that right– preteen girls — tweens). She picked up the tip from Jenn Satterwhite on Blogher:
…the ad copy for the game:
The ad featured a well-coiffed but bookish teen (you can tell the nerdy girls by the glasses, you know) explaining that her time in the library will give her a chance to come up with a rumor to start about Amy “because I need to get my flirt on with Justin and she needs to back off.”
Then the announcer copy goes on to say: “The Hook-Up. A game of charm and treachery and deceit. Where you do whatever it takes to hook up with your dream guy. So go ahead. Be as flirtatious and manipulative and outrageous as you want to be. No one has to know.”
The thing that just drives me crazy about this is how pervasive this is in our culture. I’m also here to tell you that the message DOES sink in with these kids.
We have just come out of a month of dealing with some issues with regard to Sticks and his girlfriend — a girl who is sweet, bright, and lovely. She is sixteen. The issues, without being too specific, concerned some fairly suggestive text messages which arrived around the time that Sticks got very busy and didn’t have a lot of time for her. With summer around the corner and the swimming pool very much on the radar, we were concerned about where this was all going to go.
Our perception was that the texting ramped up when his attention turned to other things. Maybe we’re wrong, but that’s how it looked from our end.
The thing is, she didn’t see what our problem was at first. She basically explained that it was just ‘talk’ and didn’t mean they would actually ‘do’. Hmmmmm. I don’t believe that even if her intentions lay in that direction. Talk is the first step toward doing — it breaks the initial barrier.
But hey — culture is telling her and other kids that you must be weird if you DON’T pursue (a la “the Hookup” promo), that you must be weird if you DON’T have sex by the time you’ve hit sweet sixteen, and that everyone does it, and that sex and love are somehow synonymous.
Somewhere between my generation and my kids’ generation, we allowed a cultural turnaround to an opposite extreme. The problem is that this extreme can be life-threatening at worst, and emotionally debilitating to kids already coping with way too much stress at best. As if they don’t have enough on their plate dealing with grades, social pressures, hormones, getting into college, finding a peer group, etc., they’re supposed to throw THIS into the mix?
I’m with Donna. Send Viacom and MTV (Noggin’s parents) an email, letter, whatever, protesting their exploitation of preteen girls. Here are the addresses:
MTV Networks
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
(212) 258-8000
Viacom
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
(212) 258-6000
Update: I just paid a visit to this game and it’s not only incredibly banal, it’s downright nasty. What are they thinking?
Technorati Tags: noggin, mtv, viacom, the hookup, teens, tweens, culture
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