Ploys for tots...

The problem with kids' attention and the internet is the same as the problem with viruses and vaccinations. What worked yesterday is underpowered and ineffective today.

It's too easy to be distracted on the web, it offers the constant promise of new amusements that might be a million times more wow than, say, this tired old blog entry. Audiences escape. Marketers know this, and like vaccination manufacturers, they put enormous pressure on themselves to create the most super-attention-controlling content. They know your kids' attention needs to be held captive in order to get their important messages across. So we get a system in which our kids are forever chased by advertisers and their deftly engineered eye-popping, hair-raising, mind-mesmerizing hooks. What could possibly go wrong?