What Is The Causal And Negative Effects Of Advertising?

The author of “Born to buy” Juliet Schor states that parents continue to pay little attention on training their children to thrive socially through many dimensions of their lives, but instead leave them exposed to the dangers of overconsumption of commercial messages. Overexposure to media and advertisement in particular affects children in many ways. Youth in America dwell in a setting that is very flooded with media. As a result, they enjoy increasing access to television, websites and many more advertising channels through various technological devices, usually as tiny as pocket-size. In these situations, it can impact both positive and negative effects on the way young people conduct themselves. Today, it is evident that the media has

“Children respond to advertisement differently at different ages” (Sanders, Montgomery, & Brechman-Toussaint, 2000; 943). The theory identifies three stages; namely, preoperational thought that involves children between 2-7 years, concrete operational thought encompassing children from 8-12 years, and formal operational thought mainly encompassing adolescents. In the early stages, especially the preoperational and concrete operational thought, children use animistic thinking (David-Ferdon & Hertz, 2007). At these stages, children believe that whatever is presented through advertisements is real. For them, the imaginary characters and events are real. For example, the fantasies of Christmas presented through television advertisements appeal highly to children and American youth at large. Advertisements of food, clothes, and many other materials advertised on the televisions appeal to the youth at

“Most American youths are overly materialistic. They want to have almost every trending item as they are presented through advertisements” (Livingstone & Helsper, 2006; 579). The inability or refusal of the parents to buy such items for them leads to parent-child conflicts. But for those who are able to get such things at any slight demand, their lifestyles continue to be materialistic. Because most parents want to avoid such conflicts, they tend to provide such materials as children demand them. Lifestyle diseases such as obesity emerge given the fact that children demand or buy too much of the advertised food some of which is oily and not healthy for over