Are Children 'damaged' by materialism?

Question

Childhood has become too commercial lifestyle?

Children should be encouraged to value themselves for who they are as people rather than what they own?

What are you thoughts on this?

Answer 1

they're more damaged by parents being at work being materialistic

Answer 2

Agree, so many are growing up valuing a video game machine more than people or even themselves.  The parents are often at fault for buying the kid everything.  Some parents mistakenly think that providing a child with absolutely everything material is being a good parent.  I read somewhere that what your children need most is "your presence, not your presents".  That says it in a nutshell.  

I know a family whose parents provided the kids with everything you could imagine, rarely was anything denied them.  Those kids grew up to have a deep resentment for the parents.

Answer 3

Yes. Each generation seems to get worse and worse. Children are barely even children anymore. They are more concerned with the brand of jeans they are wearing than with what color crayon to use. Kids should not be concerned with such things. (Neither should adults for that matter).

What ever happened to children entertaining themselves with their imagination? How often do you really see kids playing outside anymore? It's absolutely disgusting how spoiled most children are, but the member of society that they grow to be is even more disgusting. Children nowadays are often consumed with greed, selfishness, jealousy, and snobbiness. When kids are spoiled, they will never learn to truly value anything including themselves. They don't realize how good they have it and they don't really care about the "less-fortunate." Materialism breeds a selfish society.

This materialistic attitude is what drove me to quit my babysitting career because I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I can't help these children change their outlook on life and other people. They just don't CARE and it's very sad.

Answer 4

yes I think this very much but at the same time I was a post war baby and it was the most materialistic time ever. The sixties brought a lot of us into conflict with this materialism - bit we had had enough we were often showered with stuff the parents had missed out on riding lessons ballet lessons - like they were living their lost years through us.

But then there was still a measure of safety - jobs for life health service and pre thatcherism sense of responsibility for community.

So I think what young people haven't got now is a sense that they are unconditionally loved for who they are and can be fitted into society how they come - It is all so individualistic and competitive that the status accrues to the ownership of things.

I don't have a clue how we put that back. Individualism certainly isn't the freedom it once was or could have been.

I think that we have lost more than we know.

Answer 5

Let me tell you about a couple of little materialistic kids I know who get everything they want and more (they're approx 8 to 11). They walked into the hospice where their grandfather lay dying and said, "Hey, Grandpa! Look, we got new build-a-bears!". This is a true story of the warped minds of materialistic kids. And the man was my father.

Answer 6

Although it is nice to have the extras in life,what matters most are values.  Without values,material items really have no true meaning.

Answer 7

I would give them anything to get them to change...

Answer 8

I have two girls 10 and 8 who aren't materialistic at all.  None of their friends are either, apart from maybe one girl who's an only child.

I totally disagree.

Answer 9

Of course / not

Children CAN be damaged by the wealth of materialism, or the lack of it .

You can be damaged by a 'wealth of approbation', and damaged by the lack of it.

You can sleep on a really comfy pillow, and suffocate if a container load should fall on top of you.

Sash.

Answer 10

no

Answer 11

Everyone is damaged by materialism.

If I was in charge nobody would be allowed to earn more than £30,000 pa, this is more than enough.

Excess monies would be put into great enterprises like getting man to mars or bringing the atmosphere of Venus under control so that we could go and inhabit it.

Look at how wealthy we are compared with the ancient Egyptians and yet look at what they left behind.

Roll on the end of oil and the end of western civilisation.

Answer 12

In the rush to get more, we have created a society where you need to earn good money just to purchase the basics (ie somewhere to live). This means the focus for all children as they mature will be to earn to achieve the simple things. Why are we in this mess. Part of the problem is buy to lets, part of it is mass immigration....

Answer 13

It pains me to see our children motivated by money,

Some no longer value human life as the gift it's meant to be.

Thank you :)

Children should not be subjected to commercialism.

Answer 14

Honestly, on the whole, I think yes. But it's only some. Not all children are driven by the idea that they can get the newest and best thing, unfortuinatly some are.

The latest craze is proabbly the iphone. (which by the way is pointless). Children are very nervous about fitting in. They feel they need to be part of a click to be normal, and to be part of a click you need the latest thing.

I've seen children being driven to school in beaten cars where the parents wear basically rags and they clamber out clutching the latest ipod, the latest iphone, the newest bag, the newest whatever. This doesn't seem right to me.

I study sociology and I can say that children just want people to like them. Thats all, but some feel if you don't have the newest craze that will die out in the next 10 minutes (moore's law) then you wont be liked. Thats what we as a society need to focus on, getting children out of this mindset

Answer 15

Children, teenagers allow themselves to be consumed by the cell phone, the IPod, the IPhone, text messaging, game systems etc. Hardly any of them want to read or step outdoors to listen anymore.

We have two boys. Both work very hard and earn much of what they have. They do not desire cell phones, IPod's, or Iphones. Yes, they do have a PS3 but they also know that unless they really take the time to learn something beyond the t.v. screen, they'll wind up lazy and useless.

Our youngest son showed us how he devised a water still for desert survival. He and his brother have made bow drills, very reliable shelters, they even found a copy of a WW2 rationing card.

I can honestly say I am not worried about our children. Ninety-nine percent of teenagers today cannot tell you what a rationing card is let alone construct a bow-drill or water still.

Ask a kid sometime who was Dr. Charles Drew? Who was Quanah Parker? Who was Mikhail Kalashnikov? Even ask mere dates about events.

I'm not worried with the way we have taught ours.

Answer 16

Thankfully my kids aren't too bad on  this.

I know that they are only 6 and 3 but I DO try and teach them well.

Christmas is hard though.

They never seem to ask for what THEY want.  They only want what OTHERS are having.

But I'm a traditionalist.  I always got a satsuma in my stocking at Christmas - and so do my kids.

You shoulda seen hubby's face when I did this on their 1st Christmasses!!!

I always used to get from my oldest when asked what she wanted,

"Oh I want what my cousins are having", and it drove me mad.

She didn't even know how half of it worked.

Mum told me that it was 'just kids' and she would grow out of it.

Don't get me wrong though.  If she really WANTS it then Father Christmas usually sees what he can do.  But to have it just to follow the trend then I have to divert her onto something that she WANTS.

Answer 17

yeah i'd say they are completely. i see all the little girls in my high school running around with their uggs, vera bradley, and victoria secret "pink" pants and what not and it just angers me to see them all go bitchin' to their parents so they will buy them that stuff so they can "look cool" or w/e. i'm a culprit of it a little bit. not as much as some other people i've seen though. its awful!

Answer 18

If the parents explain materialism properly then probably the child will become a more adjusted adult. If, however, the parent is one of life's me, me, me type then probably the child will be affected  as an adult.

Answer 19

Children in Africa, despite their horrid situation, are often happier and more appreciative of life than other children.  Because of our capitalist society, which encourages materialism and competition intensely, children grow up into people who are never happy with what they have.

Answer 20

I do think children are 'damaged' by materialism we have today in the world.

Children now are all set around that's on their backs, and they don't understand it's just a label. Those labels get you places in school, but why it is such a hard compotition?

Children think money is EVERYTHING that they can get their hands on, leaving kids with little or no money at all to feel out of 'place' or like they don't fit in with all the Abercrombie preps. Yeah, that stuff is great, but why spend 100 dollars on a plain white tee shirt because it has some company name on the front of it. You can get the SAME shirt for 10 dollars at some other store.

Materialism is what kids today make it, and it's way out of control.