Maggie Schupp- Advertisements affect children's lives in many ways.

Maggie Schupp

Final Paper

December 9, 2010

Advertisements affect children’s lives in many ways.

Advertising has become a larger part of today’s society than the programs that they sponsor. This is evident in the fact that thirty second promos for major events cost millions of dollars. While these advertisers believe their products to be harmless and close to perfect, they may be doing more damage on the consumers than they are aware of. Being easily influenced by everything around them, children make a great target audience for advertisers looking to sell products. These advertisements have a large negative impact on children’s lives here in the United States.

“On average, children view over 40,000 commercials a year, most of which are for candy, cereal, toys, and fast food restaurants.” (Rouse) Figure 1 is an example of the distribution of types of food in TV advertising that was targeted to children or teens in the year of 2005. This was a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that the two most well known types of food that are advertised are unhealthy, candy and snacks, and sugared cereal. Out of those 40,000 advertisements that a child sees in a year, more than half have a negative impact on the children. Advertisers have learned over time which advertising tactics work best when promoting candy, cereal, toys and fast food restaurants to children. These tactics are working well because research shows certain results from kids seeing these advertisements.

There are many advertising techniques that are used to attract kids, and the professionals know which ones work best. The most popular way to attract a kids attention through advertising is video. Video advertisements are found on television, radio, and the internet. A subtle tactic often used in video advertisements geared toward children is product placement. Product placement is according to Wikipedia “a form of advertisement where branded goods or services are placed in context, such as movies, or television shows.” This is a great tactic to use towards kids because they are unaware it is a type of advertisement, but still makes the child desire that product shown.

Print advertisements for children are becoming more popular in today’s culture. “Magazines such as Time, Sports Illustrated, and People have all launched kid and teen editions,” (How Marketers,) where many advertisements are geared toward the specific age group.

Internet advertisements are also becoming more popular today, because internet has become such a large part of children’s lives. “1 in 5 kids has an account on a social networking site,” (Raghuvanshi) which increases the number of kids that would see internet advertisements.

Another common, yet sneaky technique advertisers use to gain attention towards their products is subliminal messages. According to Dictionary.com, subliminal advertising is a “form of advertising on film or television that employs subliminal images to influence the viewer unconsciously.” It is believed that subliminal advertising “effects us subconsciously and triggers interest and certain acts of desire which we may not have noticed consciously.” (SITE) Words relating to sex, and sexual objects are known to be the most popular of subliminal advertising. “But we must not forget, these advertisements are usually displayed in places or medium where it is reachable and accessible to everyone.” (Subliminal Messaging) This is where the problem of subliminal affecting children comes into play. Although subliminal advertising is usually hidden well it is still meant for people to notice in some way or another. Kids are often the first to notice certain things adults may not notice. Look at Figure 2 for example, Skittles are eaten by children more often than adults. Check out the subliminal message in that advertisement is that right for kids in the United States society to be seeing on a daily basis? Although this technique of advertising is often very creative it is not right for subliminal advertisements to be shown when children are capable of seeing them in some way or another.

Not too long ago an uproar was caused when a viewer of Iron Chef caught a subliminal advertisement of McDonald’s golden arches during the show. “Although the picture was only flashed for 1/30000 second, people criticized McDonalds for the subliminal messaging efforts.” (Subliminal Messaging) But a viewer notices which is the whole point of subliminal messaging.

Fast food restaurant advertisements that target children are currently one of the biggest concerns in the United States. “2-to 5-year-olds now see more fast food advertisements than cereal ads.” (Albert) These advertisements have become a concern because “the majority of these ads are for foods and drinks that is high in fat, sugar, calories, salt, and low in nutrients.” (Rouse) The result of these unhealthy advertisements is children seeing the food on television, eating the food, and becoming overweight. “Child obesity rates have tripled since 1980 and thirty percent of children are at or above obesity status in thirty U.S. states.” (Brown) The number of obese children is still quickly increasing, no thanks to the advertisements. The restaurants that do advertise unhealthy foods also lure in their young consumers with toys, game pieces, and other products that interest children, and make them desire their foods even more. “A ban on fast food advertisements during children’s programming in the United States would reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent.” (Ban on Fast Food)

Fast food restaurants have not only limited their unhealthy advertisements to television commercials but have moved on to online advertising also concentrating on young children as their target audience. “Internet marketers know how kids use the net and how popular sites such as MySpace and Facebook are.” (Rouse) Internet advertisements are just as bad as commercials are at this point in time because of the amount of children who do currently use computers. “Researchers examined 28 of the web sites most frequented by children and found that the majority of food products advertised there met experts’ criteria for “foods to avoid.”” (Junk Food Ads) Based on facts found, these online advertisements are promoting fast food’s unhealthiest choices also. “The American Journal of Public Health reports that of the 77 advertised products across all the web sites, only five were foods that children should be encouraged to consume” (Junk Food Ads)

“In 2000, U.S. toy companies spent $837 million on advertising.” (Shah) This is another way advertisements have a large negative impact on children’s lives, toy advertisements. These types of advertisements affect lives of children in today’s world in many ways. “Many human support groups have criticized toy advertising techniques for kids calling it inhuman because it turns kids into consumerists.” (Raghuvanshi) The most well known way toy advertisements can affect a child’s life is by having a child portrayed as “cool” in an ad because they own the product trying to be sold. This tactic is very popular and used often marketers are convinced it works. The “cool” tactic is not meant to only persuade children but also adults. “For adults it’s showing them how important the toy is for the future needs of their kids. For kids these ads means looking cool and having the newest thing in the market.” (Raghuvanshi) By doing this it gives children the possibility of getting made fun of because they don’t own that certain item. This could also result in a child’s self esteem being lowered by a large percent, if a child does not have the opportunity to get the certain item that would portray them as “cool” they would then feel “uncool” and make them seem different from those who do own that toy.

Another affect that advertisements have on children is it will at one point affect the child’s behavior. Video game advertisements are a good example of this. Video games are becoming more violent as more games are produced and the years continue. It is the violence that attracts most consumers that buy these games. To advertise the violent games, marketers must give a preview of the game which will include violence. After large amounts of research have been done, it has been proven that violence in video games eventually affects a child’s behavior. Which in result, after a child has seen so many advertisements for violent video games, he or she will eventually become violent. This is the best example of how certain advertisements can change a child’s behavior, although there are many more ways it is possible. “studies show that aggressive young men were especially vulnerable to violent games and that even brief exposure to violent games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants.” (Shin) The brief exposure Shin talks about in this statement could be easily referring to advertisements.

In Boston, in the year of 2006, a citizens group complained about a video game advertisement that was present on the “T” and later banned from the “T”. “The “T” is Boston’s public transportation system of subways, buses, and trains.” (Gaulin) People of all ages ride the “T” in Boston, resulting in people of all ages seeing the same advertisements, which recently included an ad for the popular video game Grand Theft Auto. This video game includes “murder, stealing, and prostitute solicitation,” (Gaulin) which is a good reason most adults would complain about the ad, and being concerned about their children seeing the advertisement. “Advertising for video games is so pervasive that it’s extremely difficult to steer kids away from it, yet-while media violence is not the sole cause of youth violence, research clearly demonstrates that it is a factor and recent studies suggest that video games are particularly pernicious.” (Gaulin)

Movie previews are another specific type of advertisement that can have an effect on children’s lives. This type of advertisement is not always thought of to have a major impact on children’s lives, but it does. Any person of any age can see a preview for a movie at any given time. Horror movies can be advertised and young children are bound to see them at some point. Although movie previews are often short, they are long enough to leave an impact on a child for a long enough time.

In May, of 2008 the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, also known as the CCFC, canvassed children’s TV programs. Early in the month the CCFC “noted network and cable children’s shows were flooded with ads for ‘Iron Man’ and ads for toys linked to the move.” (Condor) Later that month they also discovered ads for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. The problem with these advertisements was that both movies were rated PG-13. “The PG-13 rating states that parents should be strongly cautioned that material may be inappropriate for children under 13.” (Condor)

Another effect that can happen to children’s lives when seeing advertisements is growing up to be materialistic. Although being materialistic can happy many other ways such as, how parents may raise their child, or how much money a person has, and many other ways, advertising can be a reason someone becomes materialistic. When a child sees an advertisement they have a sudden feeling that they want and need that product right away. The feeling a child gets of needing that product right away is an example of him or her becoming materialistic. If the parent’s of that child gets a product every time he or she gets that feeling would make that child become even more materialistic. “Parents should be concerned about the effect excessive materialism can have on the development of their children’s self image and values.” (Special Issues) Values can be very unclear to children after becoming materialistic from advertisements. Advertisements make children think that their product is the best, and once they have that everything will be different. Marketers know that this is not true, but when they have a target audience of young children, they know that’s how the children will think of the product. This makes the values of a child indistinct; it puts toys, money, and other items in front of more important things such as, family, friends, etc. “Creating healthy, happy families means spending time together rather than spending money.” (Special Issues)

Advertisements made for children to see can also bring about problems with the relationship between them and their parents. Children see advertisements and instantly want the product advertised. Parents are usually the person a child will go to, to buy that product for them. What children aren’t usually aware of is the price of the item they saw in the advertisement, because when ads a meant for children to see it doesn’t matter the price, just how “cool” the product is. Price is the main reason a parent would not buy the product the child has seen an advertisement for. “These product preferences can affect children’s product purchase requests, which can put pressure on parents’ purchasing decisions and instigate parent-child conflicts when parents deny their children’s requests.” (Shah) These toy advertisements that do have an effect on parent-child relationships is increasingly becoming worse in today’s society. “The cultural marketplace is now a key arena for the formation of the sense of self and of peer relationships, so much so that parents often are stuck between giving into a kid’s purchase demands or risking their child becoming an outcast on the playground.” (Shah) Parents that do give in to their kids pestering for a product, can often be seen as a “better” parent to the children whose parents do not purchase the item.

Many countries have made laws to avoid these types of advertisements. The many countries that have made the advertisements illegal in some way is because they don’t want to see the consequences that we are seeing right now here in the United States. These are some of the countries that do have certain regulations on advertisements geared toward children; “Sweden, since 1991 has banned all advertising during children’s prime time due to findings that children under 10 are incapable of telling the difference between a commercial and a program, and can not understand the purpose of a commercial until the age of 12.” (Shah) “Greece has a ban on advertisements for children’s toys between 7 am and 10 pm and a total ban on advertisement for war toys.” (Children and Advertising) “In Belgium, it is forbidden to broadcast commercials during children’s programs as well as during the 5 minutes before and after them.” (Story) “Since April 2007, the UK has banned junk food advertising during television programs aimed at children aged 7 to 9. As of January 1,2008 that ban has been extended to all children under 16.” (Shah) The United States should look into making some sort of regulations on the advertisements that do affect children in today’s culture. Regulation of ads is working in other countries, so why wouldn’t it work in the United States?

People may say that advertising has positive effects on children, which may be true but the negative effects are becoming increasingly worse here in the United States, and there are many more negative effects than there are positive effects. Advertising makes kids more aware of new products that are available in the current market. The advertisements that are intentionally made for children’s attention increase a child’s knowledge about the latest innovations, and new, advanced technology. This is a positive thing, but isn’t that what education is for? These days children learn about most of the newest technology advances while in school. According to research, there is a small number of food advertisements that advertise healthy foods. The minimal amount of advertisements that do advertise healthy foods teach young children how to eat well, and improve on their bad eating habits. These advertisements are not seen often enough, to make a difference in a child’s eating habits through advertising there would have to be a large amount of healthy food advertisements.

It is obvious that children in the United States are greatly affected by advertisements shown on television and online, heard on the radio, and seen in magazines. Fast food restaurants need to begin advertising their healthy foods they have to offer to help prevent obesity in young children. Toy advertisements need to be minimized in numbers, and not make children feel uncomfortable if they don’t own the product. Regulation of advertisements may need to be looked into for the United States as this is increasingly becoming a problem in our society.

Works Cited

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