“Child and Teen Consumption”

The theme of "child and teen consumption" represents a field of investigation at the crossroads of different disciplinary approaches, including history, sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology, business, marketing, educational sciences, communication, and computer sciences. The first seminal studies on children and consumption were initiated by cognitive psychologists in the 1950s, in an attempt to contrast adult consumer behavior with children's consumer behavior. This contributed to the constitution of a specific field of economic psychology focused on "consumer socialization." Meanwhile, the field of sociology approached the topic of consumer practices as early as the 1960s, whilst the specific field of the "sociology of childhood" began to grow in the 1970s and has since gained its own autonomy. In the field of history, the history of "family bonding" and questions about the importance of children's role and participation in society were raised and added to the growing debate about children's rights and their need for protection in a consumer society. Since 2000, studies questioning the concept of childhood and reconceptualizing it have further intersected with a wide range of theoretical positions exploring children's social practices and behaviors within this multidisciplinary field. As a consequence, there is no unifying theoretical framework integrating all the pertinent and fragmented problematics that have been raised over the last fifty years about the role of children in Western consumer societies. Given the characteristics of this newly emerging field of research, no general overview is available, as there is no encompassing theoretical framework able to put in perspective the topics being dealt with by social scientists or practitioners developing goods and services for children. As a consequence, this field gathers together several works conceptualizing and questioning—through contrasted ideological lenses—children and youth as "empowered" social actors intervening in commercial realms. Another consequence of this still fragmented structure of the field of child and teen consumption is that there are no available anthologies nor scientific journals fully dedicated to the debates provoked by this topic. Moreover, research results produced exclusively from an educational or new media perspective, even though they have a role in the conception of products and marketing discourses, have been excluded when there is no connection with marketing and consumption practices. There are also very few works from southern European countries exploring the link between children and consumption.