“Advertisers know how our brains are wired. They know the pathway to the emotional brain is faster than the pathway to your logical thinking brain,” says Erin Walsh, coordinator of the MediaWise Program at the National Institute on Media and the Family. Advertising has gone from a beneficial way to promote products, but today advertisements seem to have a more negative influence on society, especially children. Children are easily influenced by anything around them, and are often attacked most by advertisers. In fact, American Children view about 40,000 hours of television commercials a year. (See “Figure One” on page four) (YOUR) By the time children graduate from high school, they would have watched about 600,000 hours of television!
Adolescents are always trying to feel popular, look their best, do the “cool and trendy” things, but when kids see these ads, they don’t even think about what the product actually is or how it functions. They are concentrated solely on whether or not it will boost the image that other people see them as, or how popular they will become if they have the certain product rather than logically thinking it through. There are three aspects of advertising used to help persuade consumers to buy their products, and are primarily influencing children. Three negative ways advertisers may expose children to this negative media are through humor and catchy slogans, celebrities, and self-image.
“When advertising makes you smile or laugh, your brain chemistry changes to support your memory. It pairs happiness and good feelings with the brand,” says Doug Gentile who runs a Media Research Lab at Iowa State University in Ames. Most advertisements consumers see on television today, aren’t designed to reach the pref...
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...se children to advertisements, which will hurt the children and not themselves.
These ways of promoting advertising through humor and catchy slogans, celebrities, and self-image, encourage negative thinking. Children should not be bombarded with these types of advertising, and advertisers must clean up their act. Advertisements are not necessarily wrong, but they need to give the details straight forward, but while waiting for change, society needs to become media educated and learn to read between the lines of the advertisements. Until then, children will continue to be negatively influenced by these ads.
Works Cited
Markarian, Margie. "Advertising on the Brain." Current Health 1 Oct. 2009: 22-25. Gale Group. Web. 3 Mar. 2011.
Markarian, Margie. "YOUR MIND How To Outsmart the Power of Advertising." Current Health 2 Nov. 2009. Gale Group. Web. 4 Mar. 2011.
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.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
There is a reason why people are always happy in the world of commercials. By associating positive feelings with the product, the a...
Cueva, Maya. "This Is Your Brain On Ads: An Internal 'Battle'" NPR. NPR, 14 June 2011. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
advertising is becoming a bigger role in the lives of youth. Since deregulation in 1984, the money advertisers make off of kids has been increasing by millions each year. kids who don't even have the brain function to make a good choice on what they buy are being targeted as young as 5. As young kids become more accustomed to certain products young, they continue buying them over their whole life. This is what advertisers are causing by targeting the youth. Advertisers are finding that marketing to kids makes a lot of money, the youth believe everything they hear, and the advertising techniques they do today are almost sure to work.
Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to prevent young children from receiving the wrong message at an early age. Also help for them to understand the message that is being sent out in a positive manner.
From McDonald billboards to Axe commercials, the everyday person has seen thousands of advertisements in their life. Consequently, people have gotten pretty good at blocking them out. In order to break past this mental barrier, advertisers have employed the use of psychological and physiological appeals in order to subconsciously hook a reader’s attention. Because of this, advertisements tend to exaggerate the real world and pitch people a false reality. Although this holds true for clothing and car ads, it is food advertisements that are the most realistic and straightforward, despite a select few.
The Advertisers have make bad imperssions on children mind, by persuading them what they see in these advertisement is okay. Some Childern influence their parents that buy things that they seen. Adevertisers use Celebrity and other famous icon to encourage the childern to impulse the children. Kids encourage to promoted ads to other TV's viwers, impluse the buyer
Suddenly, the product comes along, and the commercial transforms into a bright and colorful scene. The positive images and stimuli of the setting like bright colors, smiles, and flowers, work to radiate positivity and transmit this feeling to the product. Furthermore, these elements of commercials play a vital role in affecting how consumers feel and act after through marketing
Kilbourne, J. (2002). “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”. Retrieved March 29, 2011 from http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article40.html.
Today’s children are unique in many ways from previous generations, but perhaps the most influencing on our young children today is Television advertisements. "In 1997, the nation’s estimated 34 million children age 12 and under will have spent or influenced spending of a record $500 billion" (Horovitz 1997). There is obviously a great deal of interest in this subject, many books have been written, and many studies and reports done on the effects of TV advertising on children. In the following paragraphs we will look at some of the reasons why we advertise to children, some different positive and negative effects of TV advertisement on children, how people can cut through the hype of TV ads and pick good things for their children.
In today’s world, advertising reaches and influences teens in both negative and positive ways. Teens are bombarded with ads through television, teen magazines, radio, and the internet. Advertisers know teen’s buying power and their willingness to spend their money. Many companies even hire teens to be “consultants” and trendspotters. They want to know what teens are thinking and their likes and dislikes. Some feel this is a good thing and that teens are letting companies know what they want. On the other hand, many believe all this advertising to teens has a negative impact on them. Ads show models with “perfect” bodies. “Every year, the average adolescent sees over 5,000 advertisements mentioning attractiveness” (Haugen). Some feel this leads to teens having low self-esteem, while others argue that it does not have an effect. These people believe teens have the power and control in the advertising world.
Now a days children watch more television programs where they become the target for some advertisements. The use of computers and electronic devices also influence children when advertisements appear while they play their favorite games on those electronics. Advertisements are the merchant’s media to sell a product to the public. Almost everyone in the United States watches a lot of advertisements while they are watching their favorite television program every day. Most of this viewers are children, therefore children become the main target because they are easier to influence.
... Dittman also stated that “the average child is bombarded with more than 40,000 TV. commercials a year” (Dittman, 2004). The campaigns shown on TV persuade children to feel that They desperately need the product and that they have to nag their parents into buying it. product for them, or they will be left out of the cool crowd.
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...