More evidence of the relationship between materialism and low self-esteem in children and teens comes from University of Minnesota just down the street.

From “Growing up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents” (Lan Nguyen Chaplin and Deborah Roedder John):

For many constituents, the key question is what can be done to diminish materialism among children and adolescents? The ideas receiving the most attention appear to be those centered around placing constraints on media and advertising exposure—such as bans on advertising to children, bans on corporate marketing in public schools, and parental limits on TV exposure. Our results suggest that strategies aimed at increasing self-esteem among tweens and adolescents would be effective. In fact, we found a simple selfesteem manipulation to be so powerful among adolescents that it decreased their focus on material goods to the level of much younger children.

That’s good news, as it confirms that parents and educators have the power to help kids.

Still, I can’t help but ask, why is it a battle to help maintain our children’s self-esteem? Don’t corps have any social responsibility here?

Related (in a new-researchy way): Media violence “significantly increases the risk that both children and adults will behave aggressively.”

The only [threat to public health] effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer . . . .

photo courtesy cedar

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Research, The Problem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.