The Impact of Advertising on Children Under 12 Years of Age

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1 Introduction
The flourishing development of market for children encourages the investment on children’s advertising. Nowadays, children are surrounded by various types of advetisings even in school. The overexposure to commericals triggers our concerns on children’s physical and mental health. Many people suggest a more restrictive control of advertising to protect young people from harmful advertising. This essay will discuss the impact of advertising on children under 12 years of age and the regulation of children’s advertising. In the first part, it will generally introduce the definition of advertising and its possible impact on consumers. Then, it will establish a comprehensive image of childhood to explain why children under 12 should be treated specially. In addition, it will discuss the negative effects of advertising on children. In the last part, it will critically analyse the resgictive ban and other regulation approches.

2 Overview of advertising
The advertising, initially created for commercial uses, becomes an important factor of human development. These visual and auditory messages progressively and unconsciously affect our psychology and ultimately change our behaviours. Nowadays, the emergence of multimedia encourages the development of advertising. People are easily accessible to various advertisements. Actually, people can't escape from this terrible invasion. Television screen, mobile phones, computers, radios, magazines… our life is flooded with all kinds of advertisements.
2.1 What is advertising
Advertising is a promotion marketing tool. Bovee and Arens (1992) defined advertising as “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services ...

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...http://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-impacts-advertising-22146.html
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