Social media and baseball
In the past 25 years of becoming more of a fan alongside the superfan I married, I noticed some changes and trends. Especially when it comes to how baseball, the MLB and teams are using social media and engaging with fans.

In the past 25 years of becoming more of a fan alongside the superfan I married, I noticed some changes and trends. Especially when it comes to how baseball, the MLB and teams are using social media and engaging with fans.

For parents, this time of year can feel like walking through a minefield, with ads, decorations and music all aimed at getting kids excited about the holidays. Every year children eagerly ask Santa for the “hottest,” “must-have” toys – and then turn that “pester power” on their parents. Of course, few parents want to be Grinches – we all want to make our children happy – but there can be a middle ground between giving in to pester power and canceling the holidays altogether. Here are some tips on how to control holiday consumerism:

Schools are supposed to be public spaces, but more and more advertisers are using them to target youth. Corporations know just how much time kids spend at school, whether in class, in after-school activities or just hanging out with their friends, and they don’t want to pass up a chance to reach them there. A school setting delivers a captive youth audience and implies the endorsement of teachers and the education system.

In this lesson Buy Nothing Day is used as a jumping-off point to look at the role of consumerism in our lives and culture.

Parents of young children have an important role to play in protecting their kids from invasive marketing and in educating them about advertising from an early age.

One of the most important recent developments in advertising to kids has been the defining of a "tween" market (ages 8 to 12).

To help kids avoid the many traps and pitfalls set up by online marketers, parents and teachers need to become more informed about online marketing techniques and privacy issues – and then pass the information on to kids.

How advertising works… even when you don’t realize it. Just letting kids know they’re being advertised to is not enough to make them engage critically with an ad. Helping kids recognize how advertising works is essential, too. Even young kids can become more skeptical about marketing when they’re told why and how ads try to persuade them.