Sergetalks Blog ~ The Official Blog of Serge LeClerc

According to a survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, American young people, eight to 18- 53 hours a week – more than a working day and more than the time these kids spend in school. Because most of them multitask, they manage to pack 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those seven hours and 38 minutes.

Those figures fit with Canadian statistics used by Serge LeClerc, former Montreal drug lord who, having rehabilitated himself, is an MLA, an author, and an eagerly sought after inspirational speaker. He spoke to high school students and to community members in Foam Lake recently.

He told the high school students that from kindergarten to Grade 12, kids spend 20,000 hours watching TV. During the same time, they spend 10,000 hours in the classroom. (more…)

As we looked at the mind meld by the alcohol industry via the media advertisements aim at young people to pick out a brand of beer or alcohol before they are old enough to drink, you must remember to juxtaposition this effort to the reality of the developmental life cycle and the creation of identity – and its importance for this age group. When you do, then the reasons that young people gave for drinking – and for being the heaviest drinking group of young people in our country’s history – give insight to the absolute effectiveness of the campaign by the alcohol industry.

Young men, before the legal age of being able to drink, gave as their number one reason for drinking; that when they got to a party where their friends were at that they didn’t want their friends to think they were a ‘geek’ or a ‘wimp’ – ‘not cool’. I want you think of it this way – young men on the way to manhood, gave as the number one reason that they drink something that taste like ‘horse-pee’ was so that their friends didn’t think they were ‘unmanly’ ……wonder where they got the idea that not drinking was unmanly? And the number one reason that girls gave; well it really was more like two reasons – 87% of teenage girls who drank below the legal age limit to drink said that they drank because their boy friend drank and 83% of the girls who said they didn’t drink had a boy friend who didn’t drink – and for the girls that drank – the highest number of teenage girls who drink in the history of North America – all below the legal age of drinking – they said that they did so because they were unsure of themselves; weren’t sure whether they were outgoing enough, pretty enough, smart enough ….. and that they needed a few drinks to let their real selves come out! (more…)

We ended the last blog entry speaking to the ‘mind meld’ used by advertisers on a major target market – our teens and pre-teens – one which has the highest amount of ‘disposable’ income in our society today. A target market which represents billions of dollars to the retail market – and they fully know it. I spoke to the issue of sexual imagery used to sell products such as clothing and cosmetics – and the resulting number one medical problem for girls of today being eating disorders. I will now expand on the further damage caused by the media and the churning wheel of damage for profit caused by advertising industry in partnership with the media juggernaut – in the current social milieu of moral and ethical “uncertainty” founded by and implemented by the Me-ism generation. (more…)