The 76 station commercial is so unbelievable, it took me a second to realize I was not watching the lead-in for tonight's Jimmy Kimmel Live or the next classic skit from The Lonely Island comedians.
The scene opens in a car with two parents in the front seat trying to drive and follow directions, while their son repeatedly asks questions such as "why is the sky blue", "why do birds fly" and so on. The narrator immediately cuts in and declares "This is a problem. But now there's the Why Stopper from your friends at 76. Our knowledge retrieval professionals have recorded the answer to almost any child's question. . . so you can drive in peace." And finally, 76 boasts, "We're not just top-tier gas, we're on the driver's side." Hallelujah!
(If this doesn't feel wrong to you, then read no further, you'll waste your time.)
It's easy to leave this advertisement at the doorstep of 76 - a retail gas station owned by the oil company ConocoPhillips. There they go again. In addition to hiking up gas prices, polluting the air and raising the sea level with global warming, Big Oil is going after the American family. But not so fast. 76 is a large, sophisticated company that undoubtedly selected this commercial from one of several advertising agency proposals who know viewers better than viewers know themselves.
So my question is simple: What does it say about parents - the target audience for this commercial - that a multi-million dollar advertising agency and a billion dollar oil company believe that a service designed to ignore your kids is likely to sell more gasoline?
In many ways, it shouldn't be surprising that someone came up with a service that allows a cell phone to answer our kid's questions. Rear-seat DVD players are standard options in most cars today. I've lost count of how many times I've seen kids at the restaurant table next to us playing video games on an iPad or their own cell phone while their parents silently eat breakfast. When we take our kids to the park, it's notable how many parents sit on the picnic tables talking on their cell phones while their kids play by themselves. The cell phone encyclopedia seems to follow the trend.
It is easy to point fingers when it comes to uncomfortable trends about our kids. Just this morning, NPR's The California Report discussed the stresses faced by kids with "too much homework". Naturally parents are blaming education, demanding that schools reduce homework loads so that kids have more time for other activities.
I'm not an education expert and I won't pretend to know how much homework is too much. But the 76 commercial makes you wonder what's really behind the homework uproar. Especially in the lower grades, homework isn't just work for the kids - it requires parent involvement too. Parents should be as much a part of their child's education as the teacher, helping kids study multiplication tables, review flash cards, comment on essays, and discuss history topics, current events or a new novel. But when parents today are buying cell phone services that answer questions for their kids, is homework stress more a reflection of parent's stress with their kids?
Incredibly, a recent study in partnership with Stanford University says that kids age 8-18 spend over 7 hours per day using entertainment media, or 53 hours per week. That's longer than the average American adults spends doing their day job. Kids have so much leeway to play video games and watch television, parenting is no longer a contact sport. With parents willing to outsource their kids' education to teachers (or a 76 Station cell phone answering service), it's no wonder homework is under fire and being flanked from both parents and kids alike.
For full disclosure, I have only been a parent for two and a half years and the fact that my son's favorite word these days is "no" means that I don't spend my time with him answering his questions. Rather, our days are spent tracking his every move around the house, asking him if he wants to go potty or if his underpants are still dry. My wife and I are also guilty, from time to time, of putting him in front of Curious George or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse when we're trying to get dinner ready, care for our six month old or just have quiet time of our own - even if for ten minutes. But for a kid who has more energy than a nuclear power plant, we convince ourselves daily that this doesn't make us bad parents.
Nevertheless, as much as I look forward to Little League and soccer practice, I eagerly await my kids' curiosity and I hope to have a front-row seat for their intellectual growth and understanding. I look forward to the day when they can make an argument for why I'm wrong. And it's our job as parents to prepare them for that day and give them the tools they need to think on their own and challenge the norms around them. This is what makes them good people and productive citizens.
In the time I've spent being a parent and observing my own and others, I've realized that parenting is many things if not difficult, challenging, hard and tiring. But in no way is it - or should it be - a chore. We cannot have the same reaction to reading our kids stories, commenting on their English paper, or simply answering their questions as we do to our boss who says he needs those reports over the weekend. Because if that's the case, if that's the world in which we choose to raise our kids, then lookout. This will be one deficit we'll never repay.
1 comment:
Ted -- Good one. It fits in to the larger cultural trend that raising children is someone else's problem because we are all too busy. You nailed it. Submit this to the Contra Costa Times editorial page, I bet the run it. Rob
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