At the current time advertising can be represented in many ways - as a business, a fundamental ingredient of entrepreneurship or as an alternative way of communicating (William F. 2004). Originating from ancient times, its main purpose is to sell a product. William F. (2004, 6) claims that “every consumer is exposed to hundreds or even thousands of advertisements every day”. We view advertisements everywhere: on TV, banners, Web-sites, in magazines, newspapers, on sport events or even printed on tea cups, and all this is done with an aim to attract our attention. However, there are some advertisements which are targeted on a particular group of people, depending on age, sex, interests or even religion. These advertisements are defined as targeted. Companies like McDonald`s, Calvin Klein, Victoria`s Secret and Coca-Cola successfully practice targeted commercials, selling apparel, fast-food, perfume, intimates and other products.
For decades, targeted advertisement directed to children and teenagers was a somewhat controversial issue. Every year young people are exposed to 40,000 advertisements on television only, not counting number of advertisements on the Internet or on billboards. This exposure could be responsible for excess weight in children and consumption of alcohol and tobacco by teenagers (Strasburger 2001). Despite existent positive effects of targeted advertisements, negative impacts significantly outweigh them, and it is clear that targeted advertising carries noticeable harm for children`s education, health, psychology and social life. This essay will evaluate impact of targeted advertising on children and adolescents considering its possible positive and negative effects. Which include obesity and ‘sexualization’ ...
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This survey was born out of concern that there are few statistics on the effects of marketing industry’s impact on our youth. Just as the article on “Consuming Kids” raises awareness about children being lured into believing they can’t live without things and the problems rising out of it. This survey makes us aware of how this market is willing to sacrifice the sanctity of family life by undermining the parents via their television while children watch mega hours of uninterrupted commercials aimed at them. These surveys were compared with a couple of sparsely completed other ones. The respondents felt that problems such as: aggressiveness, materialism, obesity, lack of creativity, overly sexualized behavior and self-esteem, were detrimentally influenced by the youth marketing industry.
“The average American is exposed to some 500 ads daily from television, newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, direct mail, and so on” (Fowles 2). In the lives of Americans, it is roughly impossible to avoid advertising. Advertisements are meant to capture the attention of a particular group of individuals; based on their age, desires, and motives. For example, the product Glucerna presented in a 2015 AARP magazine appeals to audiences dealing with diabetes. This 2015 AARP Glucerna advertisement attracts its audience through a variety of techniques which include satisfying the need to feel safe, aesthetic sensations, and glittering generalities.
Commercials make the viewer think about the product being advertised. Because of the amount of television children watch throughout the week, it allows the children to be exposed to the information over and over again. Per year, children are known to view thousands of fast food commercials. On a daily basis, a teen will usually view five advertisements and a child aged six to eleven will see around four advertisements (Burger Battles 4). Businesses use this strategy to “speak directly to children” (Ruskin 3). Although the big businesses in the fast ...
One way that advertising is harmful is advertising poses health risks to youths. In a video titled, “The Myth of Choice: How Junk-Food Marketers Target Our Kids,” narrated by Anna Lappe, it talks about how advertisers target youths. In the video it states, “...only 16% of kids get balanced food.” Foods that are advertised the most,
How does advertising affect childhood obesity? First, let’s define advertising. Advertising is a way for one to call public attention to a product, service, or need. When advertising a product, the idea is to create an interest or need in the consumer, to purchase the product. Recently, obesity has been hitting the United States in great numbers. Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for sleep apnea, social and psychological problems, and low self-esteem. Children and adolescents who are obese are likely to be obese as adults, and develop all of the health problems obesity causes. Such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease. Food advertising is linked to childhood obesity, and is a great contribution to the problem.
People may not agree on whether advertising has a negative or positive effect on teens, but they do agree that teens are targeted in the advertisement world. Teens see so much advertising that some do not even notice it because there is so much of it. Because of how easy it is to reach teens and the amount of money in the teen marketplace, advertisers will continue to focus on them. Advertisers try to discover early on teen’s likes and wants. They hope to influence the teens while the teens feel that they influence the marketplace and ultimately have the freedom of choice and buying power.
Alcohol. Obesity. Violence. For kids today in the United States, these are only a few of the problems linked to the child-targeted mass media, especially the multi- million dollar business—television commercials in children’s programming. With the disappearance of a TV-free environment, a typical American kid sees about 40,000 television advertisements each year, most of which are for soda, candy, video games, fast food and their free toys. In order to collect some information, I sat down on a Saturday morning on July 16, 2004, and recorded several kids’ TV ads for further analysis. Needless to say, the results were quite shocking—aside from the obvious, I also noticed that most ads featured active and aggressive boys while the presence of girls was rarely to be seen. Being a girl myself, I felt the need to take a close look at such inequality. I began to wonder if commercialism has overlooked the importance of gender issues, which would then create negative impacts on children by sending out harmful hidden messages. For example, these ads can promote a polarization of gender roles that portray the sexes in stereotypical and traditional ways, which will unconsciously affect young viewers’ attitudes and values. In his article written in 1988, “What Are TV Ads Selling to Children,” John J. O’Connor asserts, “Things haven’t changed much in the television business of children’s merchandising, and some aspects of the scene are even more appalling.” Indeed, though not as prevalent as in earlier years, TV commercials aimed at kids still contain underlying themes such as sexism that’s extremely harmful to the development of the youth.
Advertisement is an area that has been established as a crucial part to popular culture and the realm of economics. It has become an inescapable force in modern society. Society has allowed this entity to possess an enormous amount of influence in the everyday choices of themselves and their families. Not only do these ads influence the choices of individuals, but they lead to choices that produce negative consequences for the individual and the people associated with that individual. Obviously, not all adverts are negative in their influence. Many adverts have been used to raise awareness of societal issues and to help bring about positive change in society. However, there are multiple adverts that have led to the creation of multiple negative
What are some the implications media is having on the youth of today? Are parents competing with sophisticated physiologically designed media to keep their children healthy and safe? How and why does advertisement influence the social, physical, cognitive, and moral development of young children? The major influence in the social construct of moral and cognitive development of an individual is the family. Due to the influences on the youth of today, parents need to be more aware, and combat the effects of advertising on children.
Across America in homes, schools, and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties.
The first reason that junk food advertisements should be banned during children’s programmes is that they might lead to childhood obesity which is considered to be linked with the amount of commercials watched. This fact could be illustrated by the noticeable increase in the rate of overweight children which was 13% of those aged 6-10 and 14% of aged 12-19 during the last thirty years which obviously have faced a significant increase in the commercials rate (ScienceDaily, 2008). Since most of the advertised products are high-fat and high-sugar, the consumption of this food is likely to result in obesity. Many people believe that banning these commercial would cut the rate of this overweight children. Moreover, a new study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research states that banning fast food advertisements i...
“Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what we're taught. It's what we experience during those early years - a smile here, a jarring sound there” (Poitier). Advertisers make children their main target because they are easily influenced when they are young. A great amount of money is spent everyday on babies, small kids, and teenagers to satisfy their wants. Children want what they see on television because advertisers do such a good job influencing them. If children are basically owned at a young age, they will always be owned even when they are older. Advertising to children can effect them by begging their parents to buy what they are exposed to daily, building them to secure a lifetime of consumer purchasing, and also by developing their ability to understand the value of a dollar.
Children between four and eight don’t recognize that ads are paid commercials intended to convince them into buying something. Children see about 6,000 advertis...
How is an startled parent supposed to combat these schemes and maneuvers of advertising agencies in the battlefield of their children’s youth? The only way possible to combat these offenses is to ban all advertising toward children under a certain age. Only allowing advertisements to be placed on programming made for teenagers not toddlers and infants. This will effectively reduce the manipulation of advertising on young children. As children grow so does the overall effect of advertising on them, becoming engulfed in the status quo of advertising.
Nowadays, advertisement is placed in everywhere, no matter you are watching television, listening radio, surfing the internet or even travelling on public transports. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average person sees more than 20,000 advertisements each year. We may not even have consciously noticed that Advertisement certainly has given effect on us especially for teenager. Teenage are more susceptible to the effect of advertising than others. Many of the advertisements give card staking information to the teenagers. Teenagers are given negative impact through advertisement by stereotype, impressionable, and unrealistic.