Advertising to Children

We are living in an era of high advertising in the United States of America. We are being bombed by ads everywhere we go. Ads tell us how to run our lives. They tell us how to dress, eat, drink, how not to feel depressed, how to feel more socially acceptable, and of course, they tell us what are the “best” products to consume. Advertisements are delivered via radio, magazines, billboards, newspapers, television, internet, school, bookstores and many others sources. Advertisements are everywhere, and they all have one simple goal: to sell things or ideas to the people. It is not surprising that advertising consumes all facets of the media and affects everyone young and old. It is nearly impossible to go anywhere today without seeing some sort of ad that wants to get our attention. In this paper, however, I do not intend to explore the ways the advertisement industry targets the whole population. Instead, the scope of this paper is to critically analyze the article “Children and Advertising” by Dale Kunkel, where he exposes the advertisement industry. This essay, will analytically discuss how advertising is delivered to children, how children get influenced by the advertising market, and what has been done to control this issue, Lastly, I will mention what the article might be lacking.

The advertising industry, one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world, finds children to be an easy target. Since children are exposed to television at a very early age and they do not have the ability to identify or understand a commercial, they quickly become vulnerable to advertising. The advertising market takes advantage of the ignorance of children by playing with their emotions. According to Kunkel, in 1998, research fo...

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...ave been establish to solve the issue even though he misses to include some other possible solutions. After reading and critically analyzing this article, I learn that ads affect directly our children whether the advertising industry’s intentions are intended or unintended. I certainly agree with the author that children are very vulnerable to this profitable and giant market, and that we as society should protect our children. Although I do not have children in my own, I have experience several aspects of the way television advertising easily influence in children. For example, I have seen children go to the mall or supermarket and get excited when they see products from television ads. This article gives me something to think about: how our children and the rest of the population gets influence by the advertising market which in turn is what shapes our society.