Kidsumerism

Photographer Lauren Greenfield is always watching our children. Her acclaimed 1998 exhibit and book “Fast Forward” chronicled the excesses of youth culture in L.A. In last year’s documentary “Thin,” she took an unflinching look at the effects of eating disorders. Greenfield’s latest focus is the economics of adolescence in her short film “kids + money,” which premieres Wednesday at AFI Fest.

What made you tackle this topic?

I have been really struck in my own life by how kids are affected by consumerism, and I know that many kids are really articulate about this -- both in terms of what they want in a material way and being critical of it.

You have such an array of kids in the film, from private-school students in Brentwood to teens from East L.A. How did you find them?

That was what we spent the most time on. I have been shooting kids in L.A. for 15 years. I went back to my contacts. We also just walked up to people at the Santa Monica Promenade and Fox Hills Mall. We wanted to cast in different parts of the city.

And yet they all seem to be confronting the same issues, no matter their backgrounds.

One of the things I noticed in East L.A. and South Central was the over-the-top consumerism in those areas. The strange thing is that this consumerism is what brings kids together too. One of the kids in the film, Matthew, says that he thinks it’s a good thing. It’s not about race anymore, he says. It’s about money.

The level of awareness among teens is encouraging.

I know. When I did “Fast Forward,” this kid Adam talked about how money ruined kids. He went to Crossroads [School in Santa Monica] and he said his friends spent up to $50,000 on bar mitzvahs. It struck me how perceptive kids were about what is going on. But that awareness did not give them immunity to it. They still felt like they needed to compete even if they knew it wasn’t right.

Is this just a local epidemic?

No. This culture of celebrity and image really affects kids all over. L.A. is the place where you can see the extremes because we’re closer to the fire. For “Girl Culture,” I went around the country and saw that 16-year-olds in Adina, Minn., were very similar to girls in Beverly Hills.

How are they alike?

We share this national and international media culture that is the biggest influencer on kids. We share information so there is this homogenization among kids. The rich and poor are sharing very similar values.

Everyone thinks girls are worse than boys when it comes to materialism. But is gender really all that relevant?

The boys talk more about sneakers; the girls talk more about jeans. The boys feel the same pressure as girls to shop in certain places and wear certain clothes. For girls, it goes beyond the clothes and it becomes about body image. They think that if they have certain jeans, their butt will look OK too.

The parents deal with this pressure too. They want their kids to fit in.

It’s a Catch-22 for us parents, I think. But we live in a country where our president told us that shopping was our contribution to the world. There are very few of us who are not part of this culture of consumerism and we do pass it along to our kids. I see it in my son who is 7 and constantly asking for stuff, and it’s a struggle to say no.

Ironically, it would seem that shopping malls have become the safe havens of the 21st century for kids. I don’t know that kids even go out to play anymore.

My husband and I were laughing last weekend because we had nothing to do on a Saturday and we decided to go to the Santa Monica Promenade because there would be something for everyone. I could look at books and my son could go to the Apple Store. “Let’s have our family time in a consumer environment.”

monica.corcoran@latimes.com

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For “kids + money” screening information, go to afi.com.