Young children today have become the primary focus of marketing flurry, with targets for everything from music, and health. There is no doubt that marketers have their sights on kids because they are increasing in buying power. Perhaps the significant reasons marketers target young kids is because of the money they spend, the influence they have on the parents spending, and the money they will spend in future. Children spend yet there are serious social concerns that come with marketing to children. Young children are not able to fully understand the commercial messages. Similarly, there is a worrying concern that these commercials encourage a rude behavior. Further is the social concern that these ads may lead children to have materialistic values. With the increased marketing, all the features of a child's life including education, health, and values have been compromised by their presence in the marketplace.
Do you think that the marketing to children is a social problem? Why?
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It is fundamentally deceptive. People around the children, that is, parents, teachers, siblings and the community at large, have the interest of the children at heart. What these people do will always have a profound impact, usually positive, on the children. Yet with advertising in picture, children are often exposed to people who never have their best interests at heart. What they have are tools tailored to manipulate their behavior to suit their selfish marketing interests. Besides this, marketing to children is the source of the social problems (Linn, 2005). The problems include depletion of creative play, the false idea that things we buy make us happy, acquisition of materialistic values and precocious sexuality among others. It affects all the aspects of a child’s life from education to
George Parker once said, “The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising." Advertisers use many different techniques that target children and teens. Many people do not realize how harmful this can turn out to be. Advertising plays a harmful role in the lives of youth because it poses health risks, prevents children and teens from saving money, and exposes them to way too many ads.
The United States has had a long-standing policy of intervening in the affairs of other nations when the country has thought it within its best interests to do so. Since the 1970’s the United States has tried to impose its will on other nations to combat the most pressing political enemy of the day often linking the war on drugs to the matter to stoke support both domestically and abroad. In the times of the Cold War, this enemy was communism and the government tried to make the connection of the “Red Dope Menace” insinuating drug links with China, Castro’s Cuba, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. However, as the world has evolved and communism’s prominence has waned, there is a new enemy whose existence has become intertwined with the drug war. That enemy is terrorism. The connection has gone so far that politicians and journalists have coined a new term to describe the link calling this new problem of our time “Narco-terror.” This paper will examine US efforts to control the drug trade and fight terrorism in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan and the desired and often undesired consequences that have come about because of those efforts.
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.
... child will draw his or her own conclusion that listening to advertising is a very poor way to make choices. Then, as the child grows up, he or she will see for his or herself proof of this idea - it does not need to be shown to the child explicitly.
Any agency that uses children for marketing schemes spend hundreds of billions dollars each year world wide persuading and manipulating consumer’s lifestyles that lead to overindulgence and squandering. Three articles uncover a social problem that advertising companies need to report about. In his research piece “Kid Kustomers” Eric Schlosser considers the reasons for the number of parents that allow their children to consume such harmful foods such as ‘McDonalds’. McDonalds is food that is meant to be fast and not meant to be a regular diet. Advertising exploits children’s needs for the wealth of their enterprise, creating false solutions, covering facts about their food and deceiving children’s insecurities. It contains dissatisfaction that leads to over consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, American Psychological Association article, “Youth Oriented Advertising” reveals the facts upon the statics on consumers in the food industries. The relationship that encourages young children to adapt towards food marketing schemes, make them more vulnerable to other schemes, such as, advertising towards clothing, toys and cars. Article writer of “The relationship between cartoon trade character recognition and attitude toward product category in young children”, Richard Mizerski, discusses a sample that was given to children ages three to six years old, about how advertising incurs young children that are attracted too certain objects or products on the market.
This helps widen the idea of just how many ways children and teens can be affected by advertisements not just by making them more accessible but making them a part of what this society is. By making their products a part of the child’s life they are allowing the product to become a norm in the life of a child.
The world has begun to realize advertising to children results in failure, but America falls behind on these trends. According to Kilbourne, author of “Own This Child,” an essay focusing on advertisements targeting children, America stands as one of the last few industrialized nations that continues to legalize advertising to children. He writes about the myriad of attempts by companies to advertise to adolescents. Kilbourne mentions the effort made by big companies to be present in television commercials and even schools, so their products and brand names are wired into the child’s mind from an early age. However, companies are blind to the minimal movement they make in children’s lives. Business men in their fancy suits sitting in big offices
The land of the free, brave and consumerism is what the United States has become today. The marketing industry is exploiting children through advertisement, which is ridiculously unfair to children. We are around advertisement and marketing where ever we go; at times, we don't even notice that we are being targeted to spend our money. As a matter of fact, we live to buy; we need and want things constantly, and it will never stop. The film, Consuming Kids , written by Adriana Barbaro and directed by Jeremy Earp, highlights children as this powerful demographic, with billions of dollars in buying power, but the lack of understanding of marketers’ aggressive strategies. Children are easily influenced and taken advantage of, which is why commercialization of children needs to stop. Commercialization to children leads to problems that parents do not even know are happening such as social, future, and rewired childhood problems. Government regulations need to put a stop to corporations that live, breathe and sell the idea of consumerism to children and instead show that genuine relationships and values are what are important.
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 ...
This makes children’s interest trivial and superficial. For instance, most of children refuse to buy any cheap products. They prefer most famous shop such as H&M, Splash, and Matalan and other brands. This help them to think that the fashionable and people who buy from expensive brand are the best people. As well, it causes them also to communicate with these people only. Thus they will be arrogant and judge people from their forms. In addition, not all parents have the ability to buy from the expensive brand and they try to reduce their spending in order to give their kids they needs and wants. Moreover, several ads seen currently include harmful stunts that kids try to do them. Due to, do not aware and understand the dangerous of it. For example, the ads of Red Bull drink that give energy for people. The company of this drink advertised this drink by famous quote which is “Red bull gives you wings”. Also they are representing this quote in ads. The last bad influence that can considered as the most essential one, is that the advertising can effect self- esteem by makes them feel inferior which weakens the personality of the child. Thus , it causes the kids hate their parents. Due to, the parents do not satisfy their children in the brands they want, food or any other
Advertising works best if it targets the people who would likely to use the product . Therefore , many unethical things are done to place advertisements in places . People do not know what actually they need , they would not know what to buy . Because of these facts , in order to get the attention of consumers , companies try all kind of advertising tactics even if they involve illegal and dirty tricks . One of the well-known illegal trick is called “bait and switch”. This tactic is mainly about placing an advertisement for a particular object at tremendous value . Then ,customers get into store and could not find the object, because it is no longer available . While they are so sad about what they missed , they automatically direct themselves to a similar product which is not good as previous but most of the time they feel satisfied . These tactics do not only influence adults , they influence kids as well . There is huge amount of ethical concerns about advertising which relates with children .Children may get the wrong impression a...
“There are twelve billion dollars spent annually on ads directed at children” (Dittmann, 2004). These advertisements target young, impressionable minds, capture the attention of the child and imprint an ideal or message. While watching advertisements, a child develops a like or dislike for an activity or product. The strength of the desire is proportional to exposure. Desire creates action and action creates sales. I observed this principle with a sibling, my younger brother Eron. When a General Electric commercial came on television he, would turn and be mystified by the music and dancing of the actors. Around the age of eight, he expressed a very strong opinion that General Electric products are superior to other products. At this stage in his development, he did not have the cognitive ability to think abstractly to weigh all of the aspects associated with what makes a product of quality.
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.
As a little girl I loved watching television shows on Saturday mornings. I’d get upset when a show would proceed to commercial. That is until I watched the shiny new toy being played with by the girl my age and of course the cool new one that came into the happy meal, then I’d forget. After seeing the appealing commercial I’d run to my mom and try to slickly mention it. “You know McDonalds has a new Monster’s Inc. toy in their happy meal. Isn’t that great? “Now I realize that back then I was targeted by big companies to beg my parents for things that I didn’t need or that wasn’t good for me in order to make money. Advertising today is affecting the health of today’s children because they eat the unhealthy foods advertised to them on: television, the internet, and even at school. Therefore, an impassioned discussion of possible solutions has been brewing.
The textbook used in class (Huffman, 2002) describes that “advertising has numerous” methods to hook the individual into “buying their products and services.” The advertising. company surrounds a particular candidate such as a child and immediately sinks their teeth into the child’s mind to manipulate the child into desiring their products. Through TV, cartoons and magazine ads, children are hit by one subliminal message after another. They are shown how this product will improve their status by making them the envy of all their friends.