Targets

As much as advertising companies use technology and marketing techniques to try to appeal to young people, the reverse is also true.

A few years ago, I heard of this ultrasound emitting box that could only be heard by young people. This was marketed to retail environments in the US and Europe to avoid “gangs” of young people and supposedly by extension crime as the high pitch sound was unbearable to them and they would disperse. In a society that grows more paranoid and at the same time nostalgic of a time when children could play outside freely, this strikes me as hypocritical and contradictory.
Teenage the history of youth culture goes into details of how the time in between being a child and being considered an adult, was essentially created culturally as a result of industrialisation, entertainment, and other social factors like obligatory education.

If youth is a social construct, you have to ask whether we’re at all adapted to it, or at ease with it. The “anti-youth box” certainly indicates we’re not and that the markets we have created aren’t either.

In a way Blyk is a leader in its field, by accepting that the market exists in itself and deserves attention and to be catered to, instead of being accused of being too young or have aspirations of adulthood rammed down their throat.

Entry Filed under: Advertising, Counterculture In technology, Technologies