Advertising is Creating Materialistic Consumers

American youth represent a large target for the advertising market. Advertising to American youth means big business and lucrative profits for suppliers of products and services. “American children represent a dynamic retail market, influencing an estimated $500 billion in total retail spending” ("Marketing to children:" 2009). Youth are impressionable, they will examine many advertisements and conclude they want or need many of the advertised products and services. The result is purchasing and the collecting of inanimate objects, in most cases many of them by our youth. Through constant global advertising, extreme purchasing and the plentiful accumulation of objects, our youth are turning into “shopaholics” or “consumer addicts” and they are adopting materialistic values.

In other words, materialistic values are being forced upon our youth in advertisements by encouraging or persuading consistent purchasing of products and services. Since advertising is virtually all around us, materialism can begin at a very young age. According to Goldberg and Gorn (1978), “Materialistic values are correlated to exposure to marketing for children as young as preschoolers” (p. 22). The younger the better in the advertisers yes as they see dollar signs. If you target them young, you can mold them like clay and the materialism will build and expand over time.

Keep in mind youth are easy prey, and reaching them as a demographic is also a simple accomplishment. Television commercials, magazines and the internet are the some of the more popular methods in which to reach America’s youth. They are a captive audience, they spend countless hours watching television and surfing on the internet. It is a shame our technological advances over the centuries have actually turned against our youth, at least when it comes to non-censored advertising. It should be no surprise they are a likely target and potentially big money makers.