We like to think that a protective barrier separates children from society. Kids live in a bubble. They have special books and toys and television programs, all of which present them with a sanitized version of the world. We don't like to think about the ways in which the cultural elements of children's worlds are saturated with "outside" social forces of nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Sometimes it is obvious. Feminists have done a fine job critiquing the image of womanhood and the female body promoted by Barbie dolls. Disney has been duly criticized for its patriarchal values and often explicit racism. Fads such as pogs (or bottle caps) have really laid bare the money-making schemes that, with the help of creative marketing and television/movie product integrations, have the power to shape children's behavior.
Then there are the still obvious but less uniformly accepted social/political implications of youth culture. There are endless debates about the harms of Gangsta Rap and violent movies and video games. We just had another round of this after the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook. Some people say, "It's no wonder we have all these mass shootings. Look at the games young people are playing, and the movies they are watching." And then of course others fire back with either the less persuasive argument that "kids really don't take the violence seriously and exposure to video games/movies alone doesn't predict whether any particular person will become a mass murder" (and then they typically blame the news media, because, as we all know, there is no greater young adult influence than the news) - or the slightly more convincing but nonetheless fallacious argument that "other countries have violent video games and they don't have these mass shootings.... ipso facto, there is absolutely no relationship between violence embedded in cultural artifacts and real, enacted violence."
Any kind of culture - whether it is adult culture, teenage culture, children's culture - penetrates individual consciousness and shapes behavior. If your argument is premised on culture being in any way inconsequential, then you are clearly wrong. Every encounter with a cultural production provides us with images, vocabulary, and morally charged narrative, which together compose a framework for interpreting, valuing, and talking about the world. To put it crudely: the images, words, and narratives that we are presented through cultural media determine what we believe and how we perceive the world around us.
So, for example, if one is consistently, from childhood, being presented with variations on the Good vs. Evil narrative, and if violence is perpetually being portrayed as the only effective means for Good to triumph over Evil (add in some patriotic symbols, perhaps, for greater emotional effect), then violence will likely occupy an ambiguous position within one's moral framework, making it easier to justify particular violent acts. On a more sensory level, the abundance of everyday play that involves acts of violence (from toy water guns to graphically violent video games), which are sanitized to remove both the physical gore and the psychological/moral quandaries associated with brutality, serves to normalize and trivialize violence. This can numb one to the real effects of violence and also allow an easier transition to actual brutality.
Meanwhile, as people continue to debate these sorts of issues, a third (but not unrelated) consideration lurks in the background. Are the purveyors of youth culture simply trying to make money, or is any active, purposeful transmission of values taking place? (We have agreed that some transmission of values is taking place; the question here is to what degree it is intended.) For example, there is a striking parallel between the attitudes and behaviors indigenous to team sporting events (from school sports to professional leagues) and those that are characteristic of nationalism. It is clear that the cultivation of these dispositions early in life prepares children to be receptive to nationalist ideology. Was that ever planned, and/or is anyone currently trying to maximize its political potential?
Similarly, we may never know whether Disney intended to reinforce racist attitudes or whether Mattel tried to promote a particular image of an ideal female body. We do know about all the various ways in which the makers of toys, games, and tv shows try very intently to promote the development of different cognitive skills (we now even have Goldiblocks to encourage girls' interest in engineering) - but this is not only an uncontroversial goal, but more importantly, it is a great marketing ploy.
What about the violence? It is so pervasive in youth culture... does it serve any purpose other than its supposedly inherent entertainment value? I think it is clear that the processes of normalization and desensitization are supremely useful to the maintenance of a social order that requires violence as its modus operandi. Plenty of movies and video games have explicitly defended and glorified courses of action taken by the United States. More than this though, the military has seen the motor coordination skills that are cultivated by video games as a valuable resource in the operation of drone technology. They have a keen interest in video game competitions and view the events as recruiting grounds. How innocent, then, are video games when the military seriously considers them as a preparatory stage to real warfare?
We all, generally, feel a need to brainwash children. Usually this is framed in terms of socialization, education, and instilling values. Regardless, though, we still see children as the blank slates that we can form to our liking. The problem is that, through mass-produced cultural productions, multiple interests are trying to shape any given child, and we hardly know who or what they are.
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