Incomparable Standards in Value Labeling

If, as some toy-makes claim there is so much to be learned from a simple toy, why don’t we have some kind of standard label — something like the nutrition label on the side of a food package — to help parents decide which are the best toys for their kids? I’m sure any skeptical parent’s first reaction to this statement is fairly obvious: because these kinds of claims have a bad track record of turning up as bunk. The thing is, the real value in any product claim comes not from the claims themselves, but from the collective standardization of claims that give them context and meaning. But what does that mean?

I vividly recall the first time I encountered a bloated set of learning objectives tagged to the side of a baby toy. I wish it were something more glamorous, one of those Mozart music-for-babies discs or some infant flash card set, for example. Instead it came to me in the form of a mere yellow rubber duck. But then I shouldn’t be so surprised; Perhaps I would have been more willing to accept the claims had the toy been something far less mundane. Who can say? I wrote about the experience a couple years back on the blog, the tag I then quoted (but long since having tossed) reading: “[the brand name] Toys are specifically designed to stimulate development of your baby. Because the toys are designed intelligently, using colour, sound, and feel as key stimulation aids, your child will quickly discover that learning is fun!”^[1] This claim, strung from the neck of the yellow plastic bath toy by a small elastic band, may not have gone to the lengths of some more ambitious learning objectives I’ve since seen, but ultimately played a big role in sparking my interest in debunking the value of such claims as a skeptical parent.

I have doubts that as parents we fall for this stuff as easily as the toy companies believe. In some ways I’d suggest it’s a game of don’t-ask-don’t-tell; We buy the toys because we think they are good toys. Or — more likely — we buy the toys because our kids think they are good toys. Sure, we read the product claims on the side, maybe react somewhere between a disbelieving laugh and approving nod, thinking ‘well, what could it hurt…’ Sure. But then like every other aspect of skeptical bunk-busting, there ARE true believers, particularly when said claims go beyond vague promises of infant development. “The baby-educating industry has found a receptive audience of parents eager to enrich their offspring. One survey shows that 65 percent of parents believe that flash cards are ‘very effective’ in helping two-year-olds develop their intellectual capacity. And more than a third of the parents surveyed believe that playing Mozart to their infants enhances brain development.” ^[2]

Then, maybe it IS just the more skeptical among us who are laughing at the boxes. Or, maybe it’s the depth of the claim that decides who falls for it? Perhaps we are pressured into belief by our existing preconceptions of what products should be able to do for our kids? Or maybe… well, the list could go on.

As Skeptics we tend to be notoriously strong critics of these sorts of claims on foods or drugs. But why is that? True, those claims have the capacity to do real harm and are arguably more immediately dangerous to the suckers who fall for them. But then, not-so-life-threatening bunk has earned its share of skeptical ink, too.

This isn’t an article about bad claims or a need to debunk them. (That’s a topic for another article.) This is more of an exploration beyond the learning objectives — vague value propositions — slapped to the sides of kid’s products and why those products will likely never — arguably, should never — have something akin to nutrition-type or medical-type labels on their boxes.

So, let’s take a look at nutrition labels. Here in Canada (similar to other places in the world) nutrition information is mandated and regulated by the government to appear in a little black and white box on the side of every salable food product. “Canadian regulation tightly controls the manner in which the nutrition fact table (NFT) data is laid out. There is a wide variety of possible formats for use on a given food package. A selection hierarchy is used to select among the many formats (28 main formats, and 2-7 subformats for each).” ^[3] Why is this? I suppose, having seen the food industry from the inside, it has little to do with directly selling the product. Getting accurate information this box for any given food product is an extra cost for the manufacturer. Labeling is far from free. And as a public cost, we pay both indirectly (trickle down) and directly (government regulation and enforcement) for this service. Presumably we’ve come to a consensus as a society that this is a cost we are willing to pay and that it has value, particularly since the information is both (a) applicable to our interaction with the product and (b) based in evidence. This information has context. It has meaning. These are not just claims for the sake of claims, or to entice us to buy the product. In fact, sometimes those same claims help us decide NOT to buy the product. These claims (and I call them claims because their format — white panel on the side versus bright font with exclamation marks on the front — is irrelevant and merely akin to a definition) help us make choices about safety and diet in the form of calories, salt, fat, and fiber.

Again: context.

Is that then the obvious answer with regard to labeling other products, such as the numerous claims slapped across the boxes of children’s toys, furniture, clothing, diapers, and media? Is it about context?

Let’s ignore for the moment that few toys could be standardized and quantified in the same way as we do with food. We might suppose that we could label the box with quantifiable things like plastic, metal, wood, or fibre content, decibel level, durability, weight, dimensions, and even the systems used in manufacture and delivery and their possible by-products. That would give us a fairly good definition of the product, but then the million dollar question: does it provide us with context? And, more importantly, does it provide us with a context that we could link to a perceived value for us to pay as a society and consumers (because… remember all those direct and indirect costs?)

Now, readers are likely thinking but, wait a minute… what happened to those other claims like “using colour, sound, and feel as key stimulation aids” or that listening to Mozart makes babies smarter? The thing is, those who have been following along get the obvious assertion here: their value is actually relatively meaningless. The meaning — if they could derive any at all — is not in the claims themselves, but the fact that claims with such meaning get that meaning from the context upon which they’ve been built.

And in the case of all these gleaming products to help us raise our kids, that context simply doesn’t exist.

References

[1] Words from the tag of a toy duck, previously referenced: http://www.skepdad.ca/2007/over-educated-toys/

[2] Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Ph.D., Roberta Michnick Golinkoff Ph.D., Diane Eyer Ph.D., Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn — And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, 2004

[3] Wikipedia, January 31, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_facts_label

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