If you regularly watch TV, you’ve probably seen a cartoon bear pitching you toilet paper, a gecko with a British accent selling you auto insurance and a bunny in sunglasses promoting batteries.
But why are advertisers using the same techniques on adults?
The dictionary defines infantilizing as treating someone “as a child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience.”
And psychologist Abraham Maslow has suggested that spontaneous childlike behaviors in adults aren’t inherently problematic.
While scholars such as James Côté and Gary Cross remind us that infantilizing trends began well before our current moment, I believe our daily interactions with smartphones and social media are so pleasurable precisely because they normalize and gratify infantile dispositions.
One of the most significant and yet rarely analyzed developments in campus culture has been its infantilization. Eric Posner, a leading legal scholar at the University of Chicago, declared that “students today are more like children than adults and need protection.”
Whereas in the past infantilization was classically associated with the phenomenon of maternal overprotection, today the prolongation of adolescence is culturally sanctioned. In the case of universities, it is institutionally enforced.
No comments:
Post a Comment