The Credibility Of Advertising On Young Children

The aforementioned statistics prove that children nowadays are overly exposed to advertising messages. But what is the problem with targeting children? Several reasons explain why advertising is considered pernicious for youngsters and why advertising to them has been identified as an ethical issue.

For one, children are considered an especially vulnerable group whom do not have an adequate level of rationalization to make decisions. As stated by the advertising industry's Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) “children are especially vulnerable by virtue of their inexperience, immaturity, susceptibility to being misled or unduly influenced, and lack of reasoning skills to evaluate the credibility of advertising. Children's understanding

Former FTC commissioner Roscoe B. Starek has stated that children would probably not comprehend hyperbolic allegations or images, mentioning the example that kids may believe a toy helicopter to come completely assembled when it does not. In short, advertising thwarts children’s ability to make their own judgment and in absence of a preexisting opinion, it imposes its own onto the little ones.

Notwithstanding children vulnerability, a second point raising concerns is that advertising makes kids highly aware of unhealthy products. This translates in an early use of such goods as noted by authors Dina Borzekowski and Joanna Cohen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore (Healy, 2013).

The childhood obesity epidemic in the United States is attributed, among other factors, to fast food advertising targeting children. Fast food stores alone exhaust $3 billion in television ads aimed to kids (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004). Aggressive publicity of fast food, soft drinks, and candy give way to overweight in kids and