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Media and its effects on children
Consumer behavior proctoref final exam
Media and its effects on children
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Technology & Society (HUM110-80)
CONSUMING KIDS
Summary on Article, “Pubic Attitudes Toward the Youth Marketing Industry & Its Impact on Children”
“Few public opinion polls exist concerning the burgeoning youth marketing industry. We therefore conducted an online survey of 978 U.S. residents in the Spring of 2004. Results suggest that a large majority of respondents believe: a) that the youth marketing industry is harmful to children and has questionable ethical practices: b) that the industry contributes to a variety of problems common in youth: c) that most of the marketing which takes place in schools is unacceptable: and d) that marketing directed at children under 8 years of age should be prohibited”, (Kasser and Linn).
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 solutions were simple enough, over half believed that schools should be commercial free zones, children’s television should be commercial free, (PBS has it), marketing to children should be subject to more government oversight, marketing to children 12 and under should be prohibited.
There has got to be a stemming of the tide of the marketing industry exploiting children at such young ages. The survey results suggested the marketing industry’s is compromising its ethics for sales, is potentially harmful, needs regulation, the school should not be the place to market their products, even though the schools say it is helping them financially.
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.
In the article, Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor (Ackley 361). Since the early 90s is when Commercialism has bombarded the society. Ruskin and Schor provide examples why advertising has an effect on people’s health. Marketing related diseases afflicting people in the United States, and especially children, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and smoking-related illnesses. “Each day, about 2,000 U.S. children begin to smoke, and about one-third of them will die from tobacco-related illnesses” (Ackley 366). Children are inundated with advertising for high calorie junk food and fast food, and, predictably, 15 percent of U.S. children aged 6 to 19 are now overweight (Ackley 366). Commercialism promotes future negative effects and consumers don’t realize it.
By giving form to people’s deep lying desires, and picturing states of being that individuals privately yearn for, advertisers have best chance to arresting attentions and affecting communication. The immediate goal is to tug psychological shirt sleeves and slow down long enough for a word or two about the the product is being sold.[Jib Flowes]For profit schools directly attack this psychological need of the audience. The need to achieve something in being targeted by the commercials. By investing in the advertisements, they also earn higher profit. By applying different advertising techniques ,the advertisers’ ultimate goal is to sell their product and earn maximum profit.
“Consuming Kids” is a documentary produced by Media Education Foundation in 2008, on how corporations are taking over our childhood. Kids are becoming targets to the marketplace. Major advertisement corporations are using their marketing on children in a harmful way. Some of these harmful ways include medical issues, the influence on body image, and lack of desire to play outside. This matters, because of our future youth. Advertisements are a domino effect on society.
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.
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.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
It is evident that today’s advertisements for teen clothing are neither healthy, nor ethical, to use as a way to attract teen consumers; however, companies are getting away with this behavior, because their effective and inappropriate advertisements are merely innuendos. The modern label placed on teens is said to be the primary contender for the cause of eating disorders, suicide, bullying, and depression. Fortunately, groups of teens are getting together to put an end to these unethical advertisements and the messages the ads give off to teens; because of their efforts, the amount of effect that advertisements have on teens now, may dramatically plummet sometime in the near future. In my opinion, it is crucial that us teens make a profound alteration to the way teen merchandise is advertised, which in turn will end the knavish behavior of ...
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.
Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College, is the author of Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool and many other books on the topic of American Consumption. Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College. In this article, Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool, Schor talks about what cool is and how it has affected the culture of advertising and ideals. From Schor’s writing we can try to understand why she wrote about this topic and how she feels about the methods of advertising used for kids, providing facts for each of her main statements.
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.
The findings in Dittman’s article fully support my findings as well as my own personal. beliefs that advertising to children is unethical because a lot of the children watching the TV are doing so without adult supervision. A lot of children watching TV are 8 or younger and they do not fully comprehend the importance of the subliminal messages that the companies are sending. out by using their cartoons and catchy songs to hook the child into buying their products. I believe that advertising is a modern example of brainwashing and that with no parental supervision or no parental limits, our nation’s youth will be so caught up in the power of advertising, that their youth and innocence will end much faster than the generation before.
McGinnis, J. Michael., Jennifer Appleton. Gootman, and Vivica I. Kraak. Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? Washington, D.C.: National Academies, 2006. Print.
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 advertising is a method of communication that has a big purpose which is to persuade the audience to buy their products .Today, advertising is very remarkable and has an essential role in community.as it tends to impact on children specially. In addition, nowadays, the children are watching too much television and use the social media than previous years. Therefore, they see more advertising. Besides, although there are some good impacts of advertising on young minds, the researchers shown that, the advertising can also have several bad influences on children, particularly, if parents are incautious and do not increase the awareness of their children about the importance of money.