Parents and youth workers… why not make your Super Bowl viewing experience productive for you and your kids? I want to challenge you to see it as an opportunity to teach how to apply their faith to the glut of marketing messages they face each and every day, by helping them think critically and Christianly about this year’s Super Bowl ads.
Reality is, with teenagers engaging with screens for an average of 9 hours a day and our tweens doing the same for 6 hours a day. . . well. . . they are encountering literally thousands of marketing messages from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. . . and even while they’re in bed (yep, they’re “sleeping” with their smartphones). And if discipleship is about following Jesus into every square inch, second, and nook and cranny of life, then we need to be cultivating young hearts and minds into thinking critically and Christianly about the marketing messages they see.
And if you’re still not convinced, ponder this fact: Marketing’s greatest power is not to sell product. Marketing’s greatest power is in its ability to shape worldviews. In other words, it’s catechizing our kids into holding life-long beliefs about identity, purpose, and faith.
That said, this Sunday’s Super Bowl and the much-hyped (more than the game?!?) and looked-forward-to Super Bowl Ads offer us an amazing teaching opportunity.
Here at CPYU we take marketing seriously. We take seriously marketing’s impact on kids. And, we take seriously our responsibility to teach kids to manage marketing to the glory of God as opposed to letting nature take its course in a direction that leads marketing to manage and form the kids. That’s why we’ve put together “The Simple Seven” ad filtering questions. Have you seen them? Here’s a link to a downloadable “The Simple Seven” handout that you can use this Sunday.
Take the time to filter Sunday’s Super Bowl ads through “The Simple Seven” questions with your children and teens. Download the free handout to view them as well as additional questions you can use to dig even deeper.