Creating Ever-cool

"Yes, what we have to remember is that screens are dominated by marketing. Middle-class mummies and daddies might be too polite to mention the gender warfare but the marketing people are different. They drive gender stereotypes. And these are usually the least desirable ones. So for boys, they want to push them towards a screen-based lifestyle because they do seem naturally drawn to it. In basic terms they see that many boys are driven by a need for status. The marketing people call them deep emotional needs – power, dominion and mastery. In a 21st-century world it is difficult to get that. But, on screen you can be master of your own universe. I think all those masters of the universe on Wall Street were very clever high functioning systemisers, great with a computer screen but who had very few social skills. So there was no one to tell them when to stop. Parents are anxious that children should become good with technology while they are young, but there are pitfalls. We need to recognise that boys have social and emotional weaknesses that we can help them with. They need lots of language and play and these are under threat in modern society. Language and literacy are all free but in a competitive consumer society marketers want us to forget about that. And they invest a huge amount of money and psychological know-how to ensure we buy as many products as possible. This book is chilling. The people who work in marketing are brainwashing kids."