Help Teens Spot Online Gaming Ads
Help Teenagers to Combat Covert Advertising on Online Computer Games
Tips for parents on lowering the risk of teen exposure to promotion of unsuitable products & services masked within Online Gaming Sites.
Many teens enjoy their online computer games, and within reason, parents are generally happy to allow this when it is balanced with other pursuits, such as healthy outdoor exercise and sports and socialising with real-life friends. Online gaming however, should not become a distraction to maintaining school grade standards or to maximising the education potential of cultural creative activities such as music and the arts. Neither should it lead to gambling online or other activities inappropriate for teens.
Gaming Advertisement Guidance for Parents
A new December 2007 study published by the British agency, the National Consumer Council, has, in its article "Make marketing online fairer and more transparent for children" has called for more appropriate, clearer distinctions between misleading adverts and other page items. Dr Agnes Nairn (an expert on marketing to children, according to the council), was concerned that the "opaque" way in which adverts were presented could be confusing for teenagers and children.
Some parents have already counselled their teens about being wary of clicking on adverts on their favourite gaming sites. Many teens have, to their credit, taken this advice on board and become almost as clever as the advertisers. They know, for example, that banners represent advertisements, also side-bars and footers. They may recognise pop-ups and even pop-unders. They are almost as clever as the advertisers, but not quite.
Counselling teens in recognising covert advertising
Some advertisers are now skillfully disguising their adverts as system memos or even security alerts. Responsible teens realise that these notices are usually important, and usually require a response from the user, such as "allow pop-ups." They may therefore click on them, but find that they are taken to another site. The new site may be an adult gaming site or a dating site.
Other ads are more blatant, and whilst younger teens may not be interested in the next step up from junior gaming – casino gambling – older ones may be curious. There are sites offering dating, poker and sports gambling. Some of these are presented in "one-arm bandit" slot machine type colors and styles. These display themes might suggest ‘ a harmless wager,’ or just another fun game in which nothing (no money) is at stake.
Parental Research of Teenage Gaming Sites
There are some simple steps parents can take to forewarn and forearm their teens.
Teens like to have responsibility. They can often sense when they are being exploited or conned and will enjoy learning how to combat the advertisers. With a little education from parents, they will derive great satisfaction from beating the advertisers.
Firstly, it is important to do the research. Parents need to have an informed opinion themselves before they can pass on strategies to teens who may have hundreds more ‘flying hours ‘ under their belts in terms of gaming online.
Parents should, therefore, explore sites (such as "msn dolls", "club penguin", and "live search" games)themselves - to see what they are up against.
A worthwhile exercise is a visit to a genuine consumer site such as a national consumer council in the relevant country /state. Here parents can familiarise themselves with the latest tactics being employed by unscrupulous advertisers and the latest guidelines and updates relating to minors.
There are some ad-blockers, pop-up blockers and other forms of protection that offer an enhanced service. However, these can have a downside in terms of speed and convenience for work-related use, so research needs to be carried out and family negotiations held in order to find the best compromise.
Coaching Teenagers on Family Computer Use
Information should then be passed on to teens in terms that are meaningful to them. They may feel patronised at first (being computer 'experts') but it is worth pointing out that nowadays adverts may not look like adverts and that they need to know how a shared family computer is set up, administrated and protected before they can adhere to the guidelines being followed by other family members.
Parents can ensure teens are familiar with all the genuine warning windows and screens they are likely to encounter on the family system, and perhaps alert their teenagers to some examples of fake ones; for example those that require them to ‘clean the registry’ or ‘install ad ware’ or ‘eradicate pop-ups now’.
Teens need to be told that parents have administrated the system in order to protect it, and the whole family's enjoyment of entertainment on it, from hundreds of dollars worth of damage. This includes teens' own gaming enjoyment. It might be no harm to point out that teens who tinker with the system are liable to lose out on messaging and gaming due to the computer being out of action at the repair centre!
